


Crystal Night

by onearmedscissor



Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: -Ish, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Romance, M/M, Mild Adventuring, Multi, Mutual Pining, Post-Episode: s07e02 Stoke Me A Clipper, Repression, Season 8 never happens, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:08:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25514797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onearmedscissor/pseuds/onearmedscissor
Summary: Rimmer takes up the Ace mantle.He hops from dimension to dimension and it's not easy, nothing ever is for him, but thankfully the Wildfire has a selection of recordings made by previous Aces that guide him through. But at some point he realises that a certain pocket of time and space is dragging up behind him. Undeniably, he can rely on some wise, albeit smug-gitty words left by his counterparts to figure out what's going on.And even though everything seems to trace back to a certain someone, certainly there's a rational and coherent explanation for this?But, once again, is anything ever this easy for Arnold J. Rimmer?
Relationships: Arnold Rimmer/Original Character(s), Dave Lister/Arnold Rimmer
Comments: 16
Kudos: 25





	1. where did they take you?

**Author's Note:**

> so this idea came to me while i was taking a shower and then it really snowballed from there. the thing is that i care for Ace deeply but even more so for rimmer-as-ace, so this is the fruit that affection bears. the idea of ace(s) documenting their adventures also seemed very charming to me so here goes nothing i guess.  
> the title comes from crystal night by black lips. enjoy
> 
> an important note: i do not like genderb*nds as a trope. here i just used what red dwarf canon has given me as an excuse to write more deb and arlene, but it's no way a focal point here.
> 
> and another smaller note: i always thought the wildfire on the show was too small of a ship to carry someone through time and space, so in my mind she's a little bigger. like shuttlepod-sized, where she's able to fully house one ace and maybe sometimes a couple of people! :^)

Adventuring comes with a price.

For some, if not for most, the price would be having at least one near-death experience on a daily basis, but well, Rimmer is already dead. Although being a hologram doesn’t save him from so-called death, putting on the Ace facade does come with its perks.

First, slipping into the Ace shoes stumps his cowardice.

Nobody puts the baby in the corner, and while he is still on the road to getting used to this entire thing, the desire to flee surfs up instantly just as he gets himself into a dangerous, courage-requiring situation he is pleasantly surprised at his own ability to shove it off.

Currently he is on his seventh assignment as Ace Rimmer and while he can’t wait till he’s lost count of them, he swiftly works his way through balling up the panic like a piece of paper and throwing it away. He is on his way to save the twin children of the Lord of Llacustea, a small planetoid in the Betelgeuse system: a prince and a princess. Rimmer is not quite sure what century he is in, but the Lord seemed to be quite acquainted with Ace, so probably he could add a strange feeling of needing to fulfill responsibilities as one of his points on his list.

Second, the stupid wig and the flight suit have the same effect as being doused in some sort of dumb luck potion.

Rimmer peeks out of the wall he uses for cover and shoots three men in three shots, each precisely landing in their heads. The two bullets that the men have managed to shoot his way whistle right past Rimmer’s ears. The men aren’t dead, just phased out, but it gives Rimmer room to move forward. His watch, some tech that he found on the Wildfire, shows him two more infra-red signatures covering behind the adjacent wall and he sprints and shoots the other men without looking. Now the way is supposedly clear, but just as Rimmer takes a few steps to reach the room where the prince and the princess are being hidden, another one of the thugs leaps his way with a loud yelp, but Rimmer timely opens the heavy steel door and knocks the guy out on impact.

Third, the pompous bravado attracts people like bees to honey. And he’s the bleeding beehive.

He walks into the room and after a wink and a corny one-liner, he’s smothered in a hug by both the princess and the prince. He is immediately showered with thanks and praises for their successful rescue. On their way back to the Wildfire they talk non-stop about how thrilled they are to have finally met The Ace Rimmer, how many stories of his exciting and breathtaking adventures have they heard, not forgetting to recount their personal favourites. One more thing that has become an additional occurrence is the attention of romantic nature, something that’s completely outside of Arnold J. Rimmer’s field of expertise but as the first saved damsel in distress to his name has thrown herself on him, was he really in the place to say no?  
Well, he was, actually. He had politely declined the first advance made at him, but after being profoundly hit on by an engineer on the next planet he had visited, where she first complimented his ship and then made a bold move on him, that’s where he could not say no. And as everything seemingly does for Ace, he got used to it pretty quickly, once again, to his own surprise. Constant winks and flirting came from people of all genders and sometimes not very human in terms of species.

Attention from women and female-aligned individuals is jarring to say the least.

Attention from men and men-aligned individuals is like a punch to the solar plexus and that’s why he’s trying to mask it out as coughing, after he choked on nothing upon seeing the look the prince has thrown his way. Oh, yes, he knows this look, he sees it constantly, so he throws a smile he had to master out in front of the mirror his way and focuses on getting them both safely on their planetoid to their father.

Back on Llacustea he is, as expected, showered in thanks and greeted as a hero and he is dragged to a celebratory dinner and all the other things the Lord deems necessary to show gratitude to the man who’s brought his only children back home safe and sound. The prince, who’s name Rimmer finds out to be Herix, has introduced himself not without laying out a hint and a proposal behind the introduction, has not stopped throwing glances Rimmer’s way the entire evening. Due to this, Rimmer has politely excused himself after the dinner to indulge, just for a brief moment, in an all too familiar habit of running away.

He is doing so with purpose, or so he keeps telling himself. While snooping around the Wildfire for the first time, he’s found a series of logs left by, as explained by the ship’s computer, all the previous Ace incarnations as some sort of guidance to the future possible Aces. They somehow always hit the nail on the head with whatever Rimmer is having trouble at the moment and he is dreading to see what those three hundred and thirty five recordings could possibly contain, as he just made his way to #5 two nights ago.

Hidden out in the cockpit of the ship, he puts Log #6 on. None of them have any titles, just a number, but once again: somehow so far they have ended being down to a T topical.

“Greetings, my dear chap,” his exact likeness pronounces from the screen and his first instinct is to cringe and roll his eyes but he has to remind himself that this is him, this is his life now.  
“One thing you and I, and many others like you and I have as well is undeniable attention,” Ace on the screen smirks and Rimmer sighs. The bastard has been dead for God knows how many eons now and yet his perception is off the charts.

“Well, what more is there to say? Go get ‘em, tiger!” comes the encouragement from the screen, which makes Rimmer sigh again. “There’s a whole lotta everything and everyone, just for you! Ladies, chaps and many others!” Guess Rimmer’s been a fool to hope that some actual techniques of avoiding these situations would be shared by his old, old, old, old counterpart. “Unless there’s something that caters specifically to your preferences.” Rimmer suddenly feels hot and he rubs his neck, feeling watched. “But!” Ace’s voice and expression gets sturdier and he points his index fingers into the camera and it makes Rimmer jump a little, “everyone is to be treated with nothing but respect, equally.” Ace emphasizes on each word and then his face is all smiles again. “Get out there and have fun, hombre. The world is your oyster,” and with a wink he’s gone.

Rimmer puts his face in his hands and there’s a whole swarm of thoughts he’s meant to have buried, in accordance with his newly adopted alias, that threaten to surface and eat and nag at his brain. He doesn’t know why this situation has thrown him for such a loop, because he would be desperately and shamelessly lying to himself, if he tries to pretend his bread most likely isn’t buttered on both sides. No matter how much self-reflection he has avoided in his lifetime, it’s here, it’s always been here and now he meets it headfirst again. He looks at his own reflection in the dimmed screen that bore exact resemblance looks-wise just a moment ago. He’s not wearing the stupid wig right now, though not without a bit reproach he admits that he does feel a little more secure. The source of that is something he really doesn’t want to dig into now or probably ever, because fat chance he’s going to like what he might find there.

A knock on the Wildfire’s airlock door catches him off guard, making him jump back to his reality. With a loud “Coming!”, he throws the wig on in a swift motion and goes to welcome whoever’s decided to pay him a visit, though he already has a guess. With a whoosh lifts the door and the prince’s smiling face and relaxed posture greet him at the airstair.

“Ace,” Herix is almost beaming and Rimmer knows and is well aware that the man is quite handsome, of solid build and a few inches shorter than Rimmer himself, which, some parties he used to know at some point in his life would not have hesitated to poke fun at Rimmer finding that attractive, thanks to Rimmer’s avid interest in 19th century French military history.

“You left with such haste. Father said to go look for you, said he was worried you might leave without saying goodbye,” he is so obviously speaking in a dramatic tone Rimmer finds it almost endearing.

“Your father really sent for me? Or did you look for me by yourself?” Rimmer adds a charming smile, or as much of one as he can muster, to the whole bravado but it works like a charm.

“Oh, Ace, you’re so funny,” the prince laughs, maybe just a tad too loud than necessary and playfully shoves at Rimmer’s shoulder. “Sister retired to see to her wife and kids, Father and Mother are off doing their Royal Snooze, so y’know,” he shrugs and Rimmer thinks that he’s this close to start twirling his hair on his index finger. “I was left all alone so I thought I’d come to see you,” he looks down at his feet, “maybe show you around.”

There’s both a question and a proposal in his last words and he lifts his gaze at Rimmer and at this point Rimmer knows that he not just can, he is quite in position to back out of this, but he doesn’t really want to.

“Well, if that’s the case,” in the back of his mind Rimmer notices his throat doesn’t sting anymore from constantly doing the voice, “lead the way, sweetums,” but he cringes inwardly at that, because his list of pet-names is definitely in need of an update. He throws his arm around the prince’s shoulders as the latter chuckles with a flirty smile and off they go.

The morning after is not actually that different from the rest of those, albeit few so far that he’s had. He would expect the walk of shame turn into a sprint of shame, wham, bam, thank you ma’am.

Well, in this case, thank you _sir_.

But everything is... fine. It’s a one-night stand and it’s treated like one; Rimmer has breakfast with the family and then they see him off, not without Herix giving him a sloppy goodbye kiss and the rest of the family swooning at his notorious parting one-liner, and he hears someone drop a “what a guy!” under their breath as the door shuts closed. He waves them goodbye through the glass with one hand and a smile while the ship is powering herself up and then he’s gone off the launchpad and into the skies.

And that’s how things move along. Rimmer jumps in time and across universes, he meets countless new people who want to punch him, kill him or shag him. Sometimes it’s all three at once. There are people who have a bounty on Ace’s head, people who claim to have borne his children and people who propose marriage the second they see him. There are people who claim to be his arch-nemesis and people who claim to be his star-crossed lover. He never confirms nor denies any of the claims, but each time he manages to come out of it alive, in nine times out of ten, to his neverending amazement, it’s the stupid logs that help him out.

The only sort of a significant bond he’s managed to form is with the ship’s computer, who has informed him that every Ace before him had his own name for her and has not hesitated to suggest he comes up with one as well, but Rimmer instantly excused himself due to a case of “smeg-for-brains”. Eventually he postponed it for so long that she’s simply become Wildfire. Although, she still seems to have loved it, because as Rimmer had been informed once from the Rimmer who’s passed him the torch, the suit and the wig, she did have a crush on him. Well, on Ace anyway, but it’s not like she appears to show any preferences to some specific Ace.

Once again, he gets by swimmingly thanks to those damn logs. He’s made it to the log number one hundred and seventy eight now. He pops them on when he has a spare minute, or when he’s in a real pickle but once again, the smarmy git – well, gits, the whole load of them – always seem to have the sufficient advice Rimmer may be in a dire need of at the moment. He does notice the slight changes between them though. From the ones he has seen so far, one wasn’t wearing the wig, for starters. Another had a weird, goity habit of rubbing his finger along his nose every few minutes or so, and a third one was wearing some sort of massive ring on his thumb. It’s fascinating, in it’s own weird and geeky way, to notice these slight changes, and briefly Rimmer muses what would be his, if he ever thinks to stoop to this snotty level of making his own episode of the Ace Rimmer Show.

Currently, he’s on his way to whenever the randomly punched numbers in the drive are taking him and as he finishes listening to the “1980’s Pop Xylophone Covers” CD he’s put on just to relax a bit, he puts up the log. This one seems to be the one he saw last time, but this time the guy seems to be exhausted, like properly knackered; he keeps rubbing his face and his voice is tired.

“¡Hola!, compadre,” he begins, breathing unevenly. Rimmer swallows with anxiety in his gut, thinking he’s in for some horror story about how this guy has just outrun three dozens of sword-waving bandits that were all after the tips of his freshly done highlights.

“Sometimes, life gives you lemons,” he pauses and then looks dead into the screen. “And sometimes the lemons come in the shape of having to be the midwife for both a very heavily pregnant mutant sheep and the said sheep’s shepherd’s wife that is about to give birth to quadruplets, and all of that has to be performed by yours truly in a crowded room, because you’re also conducting an evacuation of a small moon they were settled on as a D-type asteroid is about to hit it.”

He gets it all out in one breath and Rimmer can only just blink in return. It’s not that it’s the most obscure one he’s heard in those logs so far and, subsequently, had to be involved in, playing the lead role, but this one is definitely up there in his, what now would be nearing to about 1,5 years of adventuring.

“Here I’m empowered and very much am bound to give you some pointers and maybe a haste tutorial on how to properly cut a sheep’s umbilical cord, so strap in, fella.” Rimmer sighs deeply, partially sure that there’s no way in all known heaven or hell that this exact situation is going to happen to him. There’s a bigger chance of finding a single person who’s praised 1984 for being an outstanding book – who wouldn't have ended up being a stuck up twat – but then he doesn’t wanna gamble.

For which he is eternally thankful to his past self, as he is elbows deep in a mutant sheep’s uterus, taking out her two-headed calf out, as the sheep is wailing loudly, the wife of the shepherd is crying and screaming as her contractions are coming on with shorter and shorter intervals and they’re all stuck on this starship version of Noah’s Ark as all the space around them shudders and trembles, because the meteor is getting close.

All 40 people that used to inhabit the moon seem to have gathered here, openly gawking at the medical wonders Rimmer has to perform. The only medical specialist they had is passed out in the corner, and just as the poor calf is safely pulled out, Rimmer has to attend to the shepherd’s wife. Just as he screams “The head is out!”, the whole ship shakes violently, which must signal the meteor passing through and with the loud explosion heard in the distance the baby is now in his hands, wailing loudly. He cuts the cord. The rest of the future identical barber shop quartet comes out swiftly and Rimmer doesn’t have the time to blink as there are praises sung in his honour and he only just notices that the shepherd must have vomited all over him. Without a second of hesitation, they name the newborn babies Ace, Arnold, Judas and Rimmer; for the newborn calf they give the honours of naming to Rimmer himself and after looking into the poor sod’s two pairs of eyes, he blurts out “Lister”. The little bastard’s eyes had as much wonder as he once or twice noticed and scowled at in his unfortunate bunkmate’s.

As he gets back on the Wildfire he’s deadly tired and he briefly wonders on which CD he’s had the Hammond Organ rendition of “Someone to Watch Over Me”, and as he punches in the keys on the panel to exit this ship’s launching bay, Wildfire speaks up.

“You look sad, Ace,” she sighs dramatically. “It is so very rarely that I have seen you sad.”

Rimmer thinks she’s talking smeg and ignores her. The only thing he wants is to conk out for at least 12 hours, and now another AI has gone senile on him. He’s not sad, why would he even have a reason to be sad to begin with? He’s hated, feared, but most importantly adored by many; he’s living the life he has always dreamed of. Something unpleasant tugs at his light bee after that but he doesn’t let it spread, crashing into the bed of the expanded compartment of the Wildfire.

“Wildfire, dear lady, let us follow that distress call 17 clicks away, shall we? Be kind and wake me up as we arrive, please and thank you,” and without waiting for the reply he’s fast asleep.

As he is 7 months, a few dozens of universes and an endless amount of light years away, he puts on log number two hundred thirty one, but then he gets distracted by looking up at the stars and thinks of that calf again. Rimmer shakes his head, surprising himself with the thought and presses play.

“Greetings, lad,” this is the same Ace that he’s been watching for about ten logs now; he hasn’t been wearing the wig and he’s overall a broody kinda fellow. This time his voice is even more somber than usual and he takes a longish pause after the greeting before he starts talking again. Rimmer’s somewhat sick of him, if he’s being honest.

“Nostalgia,” he finally starts. “Peculiar little thing, isn’t she,” oh, for Christ’s sake, Rimmer thinks, apart from everything that cunty gimboid also apparently believed himself to be some kind of a philosopher and Rimmer groans out loud, rolling his eyes.

“Warps your perspective. Makes you think of some moments as good, when you damn well remember yourself to be miserable back then,” Ace pauses again and looks somewhere behind the camera for a moment, and Rimmer wants to throw himself out of the airlock; the last thing he wants to hear is a lecture on how to be in touch with his emotions, when he can simply flirt with the Wildfire: she swoons, he gets his needed dose of machismo, everyone’s happy.

“Or you think the times were terrible, but then you look around and realise that those were actually some of the best times of your life there.”

Rimmer, who hasn’t been looking at the screen at that point, turns his head back so fast he gets whiplash. Ace looks no less gloomy.

“The point I’m trying to make, old friend, is that it could be hard to differentiate those two from one another. Just something I thought you’d need to hear,” he smiles tightly, running his head through his short curls and Rimmer’s stomach feels like it’s in knots. Ace gives some other bollocking advice, but Rimmer is not listening anymore. He feels like his lightbee is somersaulting and once again he’s angry at the bastard, at this bastard in particular, that he dares to spew some bullcrap that no one had asked of him. Rimmer is irritated and he feels anger seeping through him in hot flashes, and he hasn’t felt this weasely since his projection left Starbug.

When he sleeps that night, he has a dream that soup machine #63 on Red Dwarf’s C-Deck started speaking exclusively in German only and served nothing but Prussian beer soup.

The day after, he’s fighting some supervillain in the Delta sector of (whatever) and he lets himself get kidnapped and comically tied up to a chair in some hideout and it’s all so stupid and transparent he wants to laugh. On top of all, the supervillain in question is about to spill his evil plan right in front of Rimmer and this is the moment he is originally there for. He’s untied himself some time ago and now he’s just sitting and waiting for the right moment to strike. At this point he’s almost bored, only tuning in to pick out needed bits of information like locations or names.

“... but if it wasn’t for my one great weakness!” The great speech seems to be coming to its end and Rimmer can’t wait. The supervillain, the name of which Rimmer has managed to promptly forget, clenches his fist dramatically and looks at Rimmer. “The curry sauce.”

Rimmer almost bursts out laughing with the absurdity and the cosmic irony of it all.

“I used to know a chap who’s had the same exact problem as you, dear friend,” is all he says and then things escalate. In the end, of course, he saves the planet, the guy’s defeated, though he has mindfully avoided using curry in his tactics and everyone praises Ace.

Back on the Wildfire he feels more lively than he has in a while and he excitedly tells the story of his latest adventures to the computer, emphasizing on the weakness of this scary, mighty supervillain being bloody curry sauce and she listens, and she listens and listens.

“Oh, Ace, but it surely is not the oddest thing you must have seen? It was just curry sauce...” she says after he’s finished, sounding a bit confused. Instantly Rimmer is bit discouraged, so he snaps a “nevermind” and guilt instantly washes over him, and then right away feels stupid for feeling guilty. Right, it’s just curry sauce, but the whole situation is a laugh riot, and he thinks that he can’t wait ‘till Lister hears that one, now that will take a dirty chuckle out of him.

His last thought glues him to a spot.

He can’t tell Lister about this, because he’s never going to see Lister again.

Maybe, by some frivolous coincidence he might meet some version of him in his adventures but the chance is so slim he should not have any hope. This thought startles him, again, why should he ever have any hope of meeting Lister again, ever. He shakes his head, but the feeling is persistent and he doesn’t fight it. Maybe that is exactly what Ace has been talking about in that gimpy log about nostalgia or whatever.

Two days later he’s fighting a simulant ship and feels relieved at the weird familiarity of it.

Next day after that he is paying a visit to some Big Cheese that has asked for his help and when the guy’s black cat graciously saunters from around the corner, Rimmer can’t control the little smile tugging at his lips.

On the day after that he saves a city from an army of crazed electronic mops and he wants to laugh hysterically.

Alright, maybe some part of him does miss his old life. Just bits of it. Which is surprising in itself, because Rimmer is a sucker for routine, has always been, so why in Christ would he be missing anything, now that he has some sort of a routine established now. What’s even more baffling, is that he’s sitting here, holed up in his ship, debating some nonsense to himself, an hour after denying a proposition of a threesome with the mayor of a city he’s just saved and her husband.

He sits in silent contempt for a few more minutes and then gets up to put up the next log. It’s still that gimpy, broody Ace and Rimmer groans out loud.

The log begins with some moments of silence and for a minute Ace doesn’t speak, but when he does, he does so without even a greeting.

“If you might think about maybe coming back to where you came from, you gotta really ponder on it,” Rimmer notices that the dipshit’s looking more animated this time. “I used to think that it was impossible, that’s what everyone used to say; that the Old Girl isn’t capable of jumping somewhere more than once but,” he pauses and smiles a little and Rimmer feels queasy. “I think I fixed that. I think I’ve found a way to try and jump somewhere twice. I’m not sure it might work, but Ace, buddy, if you’re watching that,” he looks right into the camera, “I may be dead. Or I may be back to my own place. I’m not about to give some kind of eulogy to my own self, because I feel as stupid as a monkey with a grenade as it is, but I hope this gets through to you. Good luck, old friend. Ace out.”

Some instructions follow but Rimmer barely pays any attention. The impostor syndrome hits back with a vengeance and he feels like a fish out of water, sitting here in this stupid seat, wearing the stupid suit and the godforsaken wig. He feels disdain at himself, at this whole Ace designation, disdain at the world, disdain at his destiny or whatever it is that’s in control of it all.

Most of all he resents these two and a half years he’s spent prancing around the place.

As if through a haze, he rewinds the log back and listens to the instructions left by Ace and then he starts thinking. He thinks he’d just pop in and out for a quick hello. He’ll pretend to be some different Ace, he’ll check if they caught Red Dwarf yet, he’ll spare some assistance on Starbug, if needed, maybe he’ll even help get the Dwarf back and then he’ll be outta there in a jiffy. He’s sure that the second he sees Lister’s stupid fat-cheeked face he’ll be right as rain again and would never even think about coming back ever again.

So he does everything as told. He fixes up the drive that Gloomy Gimboid Ace, as Rimmer has started calling him in his head, has acquired from somewhere and gets everything prepared; it’s not even some weird mumbo-jumbo weird space alien technology: everything is so easily accessible Rimmer is kinda annoyed with himself for not thinking of it first.

And, well, if the Wildfire is safe and sound, that means the git must’ve made it there after all, he thinks. The Wildfire herself has been weirdly quiet all this time and hasn’t said a word to Rimmer and deflected all of his questions, complaining about getting space sickness and asking not to be disturbed. He once again feels a slight pang of guilt, feeling as if he wronged his computer but he doesn’t want to let it get to him, not like this and not right now.

After a couple of clamoured days of chaotic jumping and hustling around the drive is ready. For a few moments right after he’s finished he admires his handiwork but then he feels confused as if he’s forgotten why he was doing that in the first place. He doesn’t feel like it’s his hands that punch the needed coordinates into the drive that looks more like some sort of an elaborate calculator on top of a guitar amplifier and then puts it to work.

Taking his seat in the chair he feels nervous and weird and clammy all over, but there’s some sort of point of no return that he’s at and it’s as if he cannot physically do anything but proceed with what he’s started.

He fires up the engines and as the speed gets to the maximum number of clicks possible, he feels like he’s been sucked through a tube.

A second passes, that simultaneously feels shorter than that and at the same time it’s like he’s been stuck there for at least a couple of dozens of hours.

There’s a bright flash that’s almost blinding and then there’s total darkness.

First he cannot believe what comes into his view first.

It’s Red Dwarf.

Rimmer is almost on the verge of tears and he doesn’t even have the strength to feel like a right idiot about it. He hails the ship instantly, almost feeling overwhelmed.

“Please, please, be the right one, I swear on your bastard life, if this is not the right one, I will-”

“Hullo,” he hears the voice first and he’s almost relishing in the Scouse twang but before he can do so, the owner of the voice comes into the picture and Rimmer is sure he must be dreaming.

“Ace?” says no one other than Deb Lister. Someone he has already met. Or maybe it was another Deborah Lister. Rimmer cannot think right now; he can swear he’s feverish. “Ace Rimmer?”

“And you must be no other than a more beautiful version of my long lost compadre,” he puts on the voice real quick, hoping he hasn’t slipped. “Permission to come aboard?”

If he’s any judge, she looks just as shocked as he feels. “Yeah, man, sure. Sure, come along,” her eyes are wide but she’s smiling, very much taken by surprise. “Kryten, you have no idea who’s come to visit!” She yells behind the screen before it gets dark and Rimmer pilots she ship to the Dwarf’s airlock.

Climbing out of the ship, he cannot believe his eyes. Just the smell of Dwarf’s recycled air is twisting his insides into knots. He looks around warily but just as he is taken back to the situation at hand, he has to remind himself that this is technically not his Red Dwarf. Rimmer defiantly shakes his head to keep up the Ace facade and looks at the waiting party that is standing just by the entrance into the bay, looking at him expectantly and this is where he puts his inner turmoil on pause, because upon doing the headcount he sees... Cat. Cat is here and he’s dressed in some sort of nightgown and just overall looks like someone has just woken him up. By Lister’s side there’s some guy wearing a tight red latex suit and Rimmer feels like he’s seen him somewhere, no, he definitely had, but then he notices what he should have probably noticed right away.

He doesn’t see his counterpart. So either this universe’s Rimmer is a bigger coward or... they have died. Lister seemed to have recognized not just Rimmer, but Ace, and she seemed pretty surprised, too.

Actually, Rimmer feels relieved at not meeting his other version of himself, whatever gender they might be, because the last thing he needs right now is being laid bare and perceived with one knowing, weasely stare that would go through him like an X-ray. He goes down, flipping his hair back and trying to appear as confident as possible and just feeling like a bigger idiot because of it.

He goes to shake Deb’s hand first and her handshake is sturdy. “It’s good to see you, man,” she says, her smile is wide and sincere and Rimmer wants to smile just as wide and sincere right back at her but it’s as if something doesn’t let him.

“Likewise,” he tips his head a bit and then goes next to the guy by Lister’s side. “And you must be...?” he inquires politely, extending his hand to the man.

“Kristian Kochanski,” he goes to shake Rimmer’s hand back and Rimmer can’t help chuckling in surprise.

“Looking good, dear chap,” Rimmer’s genuine surprise and curiosity spark and overcome all the other feelings boiling in him just for a moment and he has to ask about this later, because his story of their Kochanski goes way, way differently. Maybe this Kochanski is a hologram? Rimmer worries the thought in his head and it claws at him annoyingly.

“Heard a lot about you,” Kochanski continues, letting go of Rimmer’s hand for which Rimmer’s thankful, because if his alarm at Kris’ words hasn’t been visible, then he’d definitely feel it. “Ace, right?”

“As you might live and breathe, my friend,” he keeps up the fancy words for as long as he hasn’t run out of them.

“Stoked to hear some of your stories later,” Kris stumbles just a bit, because with a corner of his eyes Rimmer saw Lister elbowing him.

“Hello, Kryten, long time no see,” he moves towards the mechanoid, who just looks positively thrilled and shakes Rimmer’s hands in both of hers.

“Mister Ace, sir,” Rimmer notes there’s little to no difference to her except for the little higher voice pitch, “I cannot even complain about having more jockstraps to iron,” Rimmer hears Kochanski sigh at that. “So, so good to have you with us here!”

Once again, Rimmer feels very out of place for the umpteenth time in for God knows how long.

He only smiles in return and the last person standing is... Cat. Who looks bored out of his mind, rubbing his face tiredly and he’s been yawning loudly this entire time.

“Cat?” Rimmer tries and he’s met with a stare that somehow manages to look exciting and tired.

“Ace? Oh, man,” another yawn, “now I’m less irritated these meatheads have woken me up! They didn’t even tell me you were coming!” which is immediately followed by a chorus of “We did!” but Cat pays them no mind. “Well, I’m bored already now,” and he yawns again. “I’m going back to my nap,” with that he starts trudging towards the exit.

As he is out of sight, Rimmer points a thumb in his direction and turns to the others. “What’s up with the moggy?”

“Ah, well, that’s Cat,” Lister shrugs. “Lazy bastard. All he does is sleep around the place.”

“Huh, really,” Rimmer looks back again, briefly, feeling just slightly amused by the way things seem to have escalated in this universe. Just like some years ago, when the Holly Hop Drive brought him in a sort of a similar place it’s the same and yet.

He feels a hand on his shoulder and he turns his head to see Deb by his side.

“C’mon, guy,” Lister lightly pushes him and they start walking towards the exit door, too. “If I don’t hear any story out of you in the next few minutes I might burst.”

Rimmer just notices she smells like cigarettes and piss poor lager and he breathes out of his nose loud enough that it startles his own self: he quickly turns his head to the side, pretending to look around as they pass the Dwarf’s halls and then at some point Rimmer forgets he tried to use it to hide something.

He hasn’t seen Red Dwarf in years.

Briefly he wonders how similar the timeline is here and if they ever lost it. And if so, then how long has it been since they found it? What have they done to have it look so similar, yet it’s a ship Rimmer sees for the first time in his life and he could tell you that if you blindfolded him.

“Ace? Ace, man, you alright?” he only just realizes Lister is trying to reach him.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m peachy,” he smiles, a tad apologetically. “Sorry, it’s been quite some time since I’ve been on this ship,” he adds.

“Oh, don’t I know the feeling,” they continue walking and Rimmer is relieved that he wouldn’t have to be more noisy on his own accord than he already wants to be. “We only just caught up with her like a couple of weeks ago, can you believe,” Rimmer tries to pretend he has no idea what she’s talking about and throws a questioning look her way.

“Well, how do I say this,” they come to a stop by the lift and Kryten presses the button. “She kinda legged it from us some time ago... how long has it been,” she asks more herself than anyone else, furrowing her brows.

Five and a half years ago, Rimmer thinks.

“Five and a half years ago, ma’am,” Kryten helps out and Lister snaps her fingers.

“Yeah, yeah, right. And so we were like. Cruising around, trying to get her back. Things have been happening in the meanwhile, so that kinda stumbled us along the way,” they walk into the lift and Rimmer almost reaches towards the lever on instinct but Kryten is there first.

“B-Deck, please,” she says and they start moving.

“What kind of things?” Rimmer threads lightly, feeling uneven and it’s not because they are currently moving at a speed 2 decks per second.

“Well, for starters, I married a GELF on accident,” her face cringes and mentally Rimmer checks out another similarity to his own memories. “Kinda met another version of myself that was a hologram, wouldn’t you know.”

Rimmer almost feels Kochanski flinch at that.

“Well, yeah, that’s how Kris here got stuck with us,” Lister shrugs and looks almost guilty. Rimmer mentally notes to try and find out more about that later without acting like a suspicious nosy gimboid.

“And, y’know,” her face goes back to normal and for a second something weird flashes in her eyes but Rimmer can’t put his finger on it and then it’s gone. “Our Rimmer is off doing her own super space hero stint.”

He swallows uneasily, mustering everything he has in him not to let it show. “You mean she’s an Ace Rimmer now?”

“Yep,” Lister pops out the ‘p’ and the elevator doors whoosh open. “At least that’s what I hope she’s doin’ and it’s not her light bee orbiting around a star.”

The sight of thousands of thousands Aces glowing in a ring is an image that’s glued to the back of Rimmer’s mind and it takes him to a terrible place.

Just as Rimmer is about to ask something else, Lister speaks up again as they reach what Rimmer recognizes to be their quarters.

“But enough about that, I must be boring ya to death.”

Not their quarters, Rimmer corrects himself. These are Lister and Rimmer’s quarters. Or so they used to be.

“No, no,” he denies quickly, looking around and fighting down the lump in his throat. “I’m just as excited to hear in what kind of squabbles you lot got yourself into.” He only half pays attention to what’s coming out of his mouth, because the vision of the Red Dwarf quarters makes him jittery; they’re almost identical to the ones he used to inhabit with Lister from the pale-coloured walls to Rimmer’s swimming certificates and the stickers he had over at his bunk.

Albeit one of the stickers says “Arlie does it best” and it throws him for a loop again and it’s like the feeling like he doesn’t belong is making itself home.

Briefly, the thought of Lister and co. catching up to the Red Dwarf back home nags at him. Has Lister left it as it is or did he hurry at the first chance to get rid of everything that could possibly remind him of Rimmer?

The last thought lands as dead weight on his shoulders and he bats it away as far as he can, not willing to poke at the origins of it.

Arriving back to the present, he watches Lister reach for the fridge door and take out a can of beer and Rimmer thinks that if he doesn’t say something else in the next few minutes, he will burst.

“Though I can’t say I mind sharing some of my seemingly tedious anecdotes,” he sits down, fully having built up the Ace wall back again and indulges into telling one of the classic stories about him saving an orphanage full of children from a dozen of homicidal robots, while he himself only had a paperclip for a weapon. Everyone gasps and laughs just where needed as on cues; even the Cat, who’s appeared in the middle of a story to have a nap in Rimmer’s bunk is doing all that in his sleep.

However, a couple of times he notices Lister shake her head, as if she catches herself staring at him and it’s like she gives herself a little mental kick. Hell, he really can’t blame her here. Sure, everyone is always happy to see Ace around, he first learned it the hard, bitter way and what Rimmer simply needs is just to keep this up.

When he’s done, Kryten announces she’s up to make dinner and drills him about preferences. He answers something nonchalantly, not feeling like he’s going to get something down his throat any time soon and falls quiet, almost catching himself slip, realising that he probably should not do that.

“So,” Lister is well through her fifth can of beer that she keeps chugging unceremoniously. “What kinda Ace are you?” she asks with a little smirk and a strange glint in her eyes that has nothing to do with the alcohol, because for Lister that’s just like having a morning coffee.

“What do you mean?” Rimmer shoots her a look back and notices that she is watching him intently, slightly squinting.

“Well,” she takes another sip. “That Ace that visited us the first time was fully Rimmer’s opposite, like. Including the being alive part.” She pauses to lean over the table a little, putting the elbows down. “Then that Ace that visited us the second time was a hard-light hologram herself. Told me a little story of how that was what they did now, passed the torch to one another ‘n then went on prancin’ about,” finishing off yet another can she chucks it behind her back in the corner of the room without looking and Rimmer hears someone cough impatiently at that, which must be Kochanski, but Lister pays that no mind.

“So what kinda Ace are you, guy?” she jabs her index finger at him and then puts her arms down, ready to listen.

Rimmer feels like someone flashed a light in his face. While he realises that the question is most likely far from some kind of philosophical bollocks it comes across as, he can’t help feeling as if he’s being interrogated.

The amount of things that apparently have taken place in this universe that are similar to the ones he had experienced himself makes everything surreal, considering hardly anything can surprise him anymore.

“From what I gathered,” Rimmer starts as evenly as he can muster, “I’m pretty much the counterpart of...” he swallows, briefly trying to choose the next word carefully, but the alarm goes off faster than he can come up with better phrasing. “Your Rimmer.”

Deb lifts her eyebrow at that, though stays quiet.

“Hard-light hologram,” he emphasizes on that by punching himself lightly on the chest where his light-bee is buzzing, hidden from the naked eye. “And I also had a certain, let’s say, smug git visit me, lecture me, pass me the get up and conk out for good.”

“You don’t say,” another can sizzles open in Lister’s hands.

With the corner of his eye Rimmer sees Kochanski stand up to the mirror over the sink to fix his hair and uncrinkle the elaborate suit he’s wearing but then the screen goes dark and the sight of the blond bob and a red lipstick combo pulls a smile on Rimmer’s face that he can’t fight and he finds that he doesn’t really want to.

“Sorry I’m late for the party, fellas,” she announces and then her face turns to Rimmer. “Ace!” she sends her rare smile his way.

“Hey, Holly, looking good as always.”

“Oh, you,” she stretches out, rolling her eyes, “sorry I didn’t pop up to greet you earlier, was chatting with your ship. Think she’s already missing you.”

“We’ve been here for no more than an hour, like,” Lister intervenes and she sounds confused.

“She... Well, she can get like that,” Rimmer says in Wildfire’s defence.

“Yeah,” Holly goes on, “I also took a peek at that thing that brought you here and I don’t think I have good news for you here, Ace.”

And there it is. Rimmer is not used to experiencing so many shake ups in such a short period of time; it’s like he’s never been any different at all, like he’s never got off the roller coaster of constant panic and anxiety.

“What’s wrong?” he goes for it.

“It’s kaput,” Holly tsks and for a second Rimmer’s light bee drops somewhere to where his liver would be if he had one, but then Holly continues. “But, it’s something we can fix with what we have onboard here. It’ll just take some time, is all.”

“Good that I have someone to help me here, eh,” he says, allowing himself to relax a bit but he also feels everyone’s eyes on him at that very moment as if they’re expecting him to snap his fingers and pull out a spare drive right out of his arse. “Although I wouldn’t wanna be a nuisance to you, fellas,” it comes out pathetic to his own ears and he just hopes he slapped a right expression on his face and he didn’t accidentally reach for an equally pathetic one.

“C’mon man,” Lister huffs, propping her feet on the table, “you can stay as long as you like. Just like the good old days, eh?” she says with a smile and Rimmer really resents those last words.

Soon Kryten comes in with dinner and the conversation flows nicely and aimlessly and Rimmer relaxes further. He tells a couple more “Ace” stories and Lister and Kochanski tell a story of how once Starbug almost got sucked into a Black Hole but not only they have managed to avoid it, they also by the power of sheer luck saved a nearby planet from getting sucked in too. With the corner of his eye, Rimmer watches them and a part of him still refuses to believe this is where the jump has landed him, but then it’s really not the weirdest place where he could’ve ended up.

At the thought that he could’ve been home, really, truly, he could’ve been somewhere, perhaps in the only place that he would’ve dared to call home, something stings and itches within him like an old bruise healing.

Overall, however, everything goes along quite well. Or so it does until he sees Lister almost shove her entire hand in her mouth, where she must be picking out bits of food out of the cavities and then she watches her wipe her fingers on the sleeve of her jacket and this stupid, absolutely filthy and foul gesture hasn’t made him retch in disgust but instead a dull ache throbs in the back of his head and he lifts his hand to rub and soothe it.

“So,” Lister begins, looking him in the eye. “You got anyone?” she leans back on the chair, “a missus, perhaps?”

Rimmer can feel his eyes widen a little and he crosses his arms on his chest.

“Swing and a miss, old friend,” he shrugs.

“A fella, then?” she presses on, stretching her arms but not taking her eyes off Rimmer.

He lets out a short breath, “Nope.” The first to break the eye contact, he lets it wander around the room quickly and then looks back at Lister. “You know how this life can get.”

“Yeah,” Lister looks down, chewing on her lower lip. Rimmer doesn’t return the question, because Kochanski is right there and he has no idea what kind of feelings they harbour here for one another. He does notice Kochanski hunch a little and tap his fingers on the table and for a brief moment it’s the only sound in the room.

Rimmer clears his throat. “Well,” he turns to Kris, “what’s your story, my dear old mate?”

Kris lets out a breathless laugh. “It’s probably nothing that can surprise you,” he says somehow reluctant, but with a small smile. He leans back and starts talking and that’s how Rimmer finds out about yet another parallel universe and how The Accident had happened there; he finds out about the anomaly and the hologram Lister, but when Kris starts talking about how they once missed an opportunity for him to go back to his universe, he gets visibly tense and Lister is suddenly pretending like the tips of her boots is the most interesting thing she has ever seen.

While Kris is talking, Kryten collects the dishes and swipes the table. The tension eases off again, gradually, like a low tide and then they’re back again to sharing stories of their misadventures and whatnot. After a while even Holly joins in and Rimmer keeps catching himself staring at her and maybe he is somehow surprised at the lack of insults on her part, but he has to remind himself that to this Holly he is a stranger, he is a stranger to everyone in this room and to some degree he is a stranger to the person he sees in a mirror’s reflection.

Some time passes before Lister yawns loudly surprising everyone including herself. “Well,” she begins, rubbing her face. “I guess it’s time for some shut-eye. Kryten?” she looks at the mechanoid, somehow pleadingly.

“Yes, ma’am,” she scrambles up to fixing up the bedding on the top bunk.

Rimmer stands up, rubbing his palms on his thighs, the awkwardness hitting him again, full force. “Thanks again,” he tries to smile but he’s not quite sure it’s coming out right

“Yeah, sure, man. Of course,” Deb nods eagerly, “we’ll start first thing in the morning.” She adds with the wink, fully realising that everyone in the room knows that her morning usually starts way past noon.

“Do you need help finding suitable quarters, Mr Ace, sir?”

“No, Kryters, it’s fine,” Rimmer brings his arm up as if trying to stop Kryten. “I know my way around,” he says with the wink and after bidding everyone goodnight he exits the quarters.

He takes an exceptionally long time walking along the corridor in the direction of the elevator, breathing in the conditioned air. Every step he takes falls softly, he can barely hear them, because Red Dwarf is never truly quiet with her engines and all sorts of electronics, constantly whispering something either to each other or to anyone who would be willing to open their ear for her.

Rimmer halts and shakes his head.

“You smarmy idiot,” he mumbles, cursing himself for getting too sentimental, either in his old age or it’s the wig glue that’s getting too strong. He continues his stride towards the elevator, a vague blanketed emotion leaving nail marks at the back of his mind, feeling more and more like he’s running away from something.

He doesn’t notice how he makes his way to the Wildfire, but once he’s inside he throws a look at the screen and thinks about the logs. No coherent thought is formed before Wildfire powers herself up.

“Ace?”

“Oh yes, hello. Hi,” he swallows, wishing that something would suddenly be wrong with his lightbee and he’d disappear forever. “Hello.”

“Has something happened, Ace?” she presses on.

Rimmer huffs. “No, no, of course not. What makes you say that?” He turns on the spot and goes squats to take a look at the drive. “Everything is fine and dandy.”

Wildfire lets out an exaggerated sigh and Rimmer knows it’s gonna lead to something.

“You seem upset, Ace. Did someone do this? Has someone made you sad?”

Every single response that comes to his mind simultaneously makes him want to scramble, program Wildfire to never talk about anything of the sorts again or to sit down and weep. He wants to say yes, he wants to say no, he wants to blame destiny, the universe, the Space Corps, mother, father, anything or anyone, because there’s definitely someone out there having a laugh at his expense. The dense weight of the confusion is doubled as he doesn’t even know what he is confused about and just in a blink he’s spiralled so low his boots feel as if someone poured cement into them.

He lifts the cover of the drive and peeks inside. The stabilizer is burnt to a crisp.

Being an outsider to people you don’t know is one thing, being an outsider to people you supposedly do know, on the ship where you were meant to achieve greatness and yet ended up being something worse than an outsider is very much another thing.

The drive would be mostly picked apart and built all over again with some spare details added but it’s nothing he can’t do.

“No one’s done anything, everything's a-okay,” he finally replies. “We got a lot of work ahead tomorrow, old girl. Have a good night’s sleep,” he puts as much hot air in his voice as he can muster and stands up to exit the ship but not without stalling by the door for a bit, looking at the board panel, mindlessly.

Wildfire sighs again. “Whatever you say, Ace,” he can almost hear her rolling her eyes.

Rimmer tells himself he would get to the logs somehow later and steps out of the ship. He’s almost ready to go and call out a random deck to nod off in a random dead officer’s random quarters but the view of the stars through the Red Dwarf’s landing deck giant porthole distracts him momentarily and he loses whatever slippery thread of thought he had.

A loud creak of the old airlock door startles him and he blinks once and twice and rubs his face and finally turns towards the elevator.

It has been a very long day.


	2. where have you gone?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just to repeat myself slightly, i do not approve of g*nderb*nds. i simply care for deb lister immensely. i deeply apologise if this is all over the place i cope thru writing inane things. thank u

Waking up on Red Dwarf for the first time in years is dumbfounding.

Waking up on Red Dwarf for the second time in years is like shaking off a recurring dream Rimmer had at least a dozen times.

Waking up on Red Dwarf for the third time in years leaves a sense of forgetting to do something but not being able to put your finger on what it was in the first place, even though this time is no different from the other two days.

Few hours later, after he’s been properly Mother Henned by Kryten and stumbled over Cat sleeping right in the elevator, he makes his usual way to the Wildfire to get some hours working on the drive by himself, before he is, as usual, joined by the rest, depending on their free time, schedules or simply boredom.

To his and everyone’s somewhat surprise, they haven’t yet faced any mortal danger, save for the fact when Cat ran into the landing bay screaming bloody murder and swearing on his life he has killing machines after him, but it turned out to be a bunch of mechanical mannequins with dying batteries he stumbled upon trying to nap at the ship’s atelier.

Rimmer didn’t even know Red Dwarf had one.

This time, after he spends some time in his temporary quarters and decides to finally ditch the wig, he comes down and he is surprised to hear someone talking. First he thinks it’s the Wildfire doing God knows what but as he comes closer he sees Kochanski’s slim figure sitting on the airstair leading into the ship.

Kris notices him just a moment after. “Hey, Ace.”

“Morning, chap,” Rimmer flashes him a smile that isn’t really there but it’s the best he can do.

“I see you’ve lost the wig.”

“Yeah, well,” without meaning to Rimmer runs his hand through the curls that have grown into a wee bit of a mess and he’s been meaning to get them in shape for a while now but other things kept getting in the way. “Gotta air these out now and then.”

Kris smiles in response and yes, undoubtedly, this is Kochanski. From the back of his mind Rimmer recalls reading Lister’s diary and there was something about this smile being described as a “pinball smile”, and he saw that then and he sees it now.

“I’ve just been chatting up your ship here.”

Rimmer smirks. “Trying to woo her away from me?” He jokes.

“Ace!” Wildfire exclaims loud enough to be heard outside. “I would never!”

Kochanski laughs. “She is a thing of beauty though, isn’t she.”

“That she is, that she is,” he agrees but he sees that it’s definitely not why he’s come down here — the smile drops almost instantly and overall Kris looks like he’s mulling something over in his head, worrying the sleeve of his shirt. Rimmer goes for it. “What’s on your mind?”

“That obvious, huh,” Kochanski sighs and rubs his neck. “I just wanted to inquire about something, that’s all. Just something between the two of us.”

Those last words surprise Rimmer but he doesn’t let it show. “Shoot.”

Kris is silent for a bit, clearly trying to compose whatever is brewing in his head, and before he starts he shoots a look to the side where the almost finished drive is supposed to be as Rimmer left it.

“This drive of yours,” Rimmer also follows his gaze onto the object in question. “Does it work only on your ship?”

“As far as I’m concerned, yes,” he looks back at Kris and another wistful sigh tells Rimmer everything he might have already been guessing.

Kris falls silent again for another moment and Rimmer takes a second to look back at his now slouched frame.

“Well,” he begins unevenly and pauses to rub his hand over his mouth. “I’m not gonna beat around the bush much longer. Would you mind terribly if I sniffed around and put down some technicalities of the ship and the drive? Maybe I’d even freehand a blueprint.”

“A blueprint?”

“Well, the materials here are scarce as you may see for yourself,” Kris shrugs. “But at this point anything would do, really.”

Rimmer blinks. “You would build a ship from scratch?”

“If I have to, yes.”

“Even if the whole scheme might not even work?”

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” Kris jokes with a quiet laugh and Rimmer smiles in return, but then Kochanski’s face falls sombre again. “And I barely get any at all.”

This one doesn’t slip from Rimmer’s notice. “You say barely?”

“Well, Deb must’ve failed to mention, but once I had a pretty solid chance of returning home but then she buggered it up.”

“On purpose? Old spanners?” after the words leave his mouth Rimmer wishes the ground would swallow him.

“Yeah,” Kris sighs again. “It’s alright between us now.”

Rimmer feels very awkward and he just wants to say smeg it and leg it. “How long ago did that happen, you say?”

“Oh, just about around the first two weeks I’ve been here. Just as I said, we’re good now but back then it was,” he lets the sentence fizzle out and just sighs and rubs his face. “It was so bloody selfish of her. And it’s so bloody stupid, too because well, you know, it’s like she couldn't realise we were different. Like she doesn’t realise she had her Kris and I have my Deb and we all are just so drastically different.” With every word the frustration and downright misery seeps out of Kochanski and Rimmer moves to sit by his side on the steps giving him a friendly comforting pat on the shoulder as he sits down.

“Well, what can I say,” he begins. “If she’s anything like the Lister I know, I’d be mighty surprised if she hadn’t tried to pull you again and again.”

Kochanski laughs and shakes his head. “Oh, yeah. She tried, again and again, but then I think she gave up. She just stopped one day.” Rimmer turns his head but Kochanski is looking into nothing straight ahead. “I hope she has finally realised that I just wanna go home. To my Lister.”

Rimmer feels like something is stuck in his throat. He tries to swallow it down but it doesn’t go away yet something rolls down heavily in the pit of his stomach and if he doesn’t move away from this subject right now, he’s gonna have to skedaddle pronto.

“Of course you can look at the ship and the drive, be my guest,” Kochanski turns his head at that and his eyes look shiny and watery, and he smiles.

“Thanks, Ace. You’re a good man.”

Rimmer only returns the smile and gives another friendly pat on the shoulder at that, as he looks back at the drive. He realises, quite suddenly, that he somehow has simply never told anyone here what he needed the drive for and for what preferred destination. Of course no one had asked yet, it wouldn’t matter even if they did but he feels like a liar.

“I,” he takes a small pause, “share the sentiment.” and if Kochanski gives him a weird look, he doesn’t notice it. “What’s she like?” He directs the subject to a sharp turn.

“My Lister?” Rimmer nods. “Well,” Kris smiles, looking down and it speaks volumes. “You know the gist of it. She’s a hologram. Holly brought her to keep me sane, as she explained, which seemed completely mad to me at first, because, well, just before the accident happened we’d broken up.”

Rimmer raises his eyebrows.

“Okay, okay, I dumped her,” Kris says with a twinge of defensiveness. “And it just didn’t make sense to me. But then it started...,” he gestures vaguely. “It all started turning out really well. At first I was a bit afraid it’s all because this is what either of us got stuck with and she refused to switch her holodisk for anyone else but then...” he trails off a bit, smiling and looking down at his feet and Rimmer doesn’t know why his simulated heartbeat is dancing the lone samba right now.

“This is,” he coughs trying to hide the slip in his voice and slaps on Ace again. “This is quite touching, really. You sure seem to be missing her a whole lot.”

“Yeah,” Kris lifts his gaze at Rimmer again. “Yeah. I am.”

Either Rimmer takes a jog to take an impromptu six week vacation on diesel decks or he jumps into Wildfire and punches some random numbers into the console and leaves and forgets everything about this plan.

“Well, you're lucky I’m a romantic at heart, kid,” he goes for a joke and Kochanski’s sincere laugh takes some weight off of it.

They fall into working on the drive soon enough and after some time Rimmer hears someone trotting over down the corridor towards them and just by the rhythm, he knows it’s Lister. Kris does, too, as he throws Rimmer a silent look over the panel they both have been tinkering with at the moment and Rimmer gives a curt nod in response: whatever they have talked about earlier gotta stay between them.

Lister soon comes into vision and she is chirpy, looking like she’s just woken up but then a Lister can look like this for hours on end. Though an elaborate yawn and a stretch confirms Rimmer’s original thought and Lister shines a smile their way. Instantly guilt springs like a tightrope over Rimmer’s insides and he looks down at his hands. They feel clammy and he stops working for a second and clenches and unclenches them into fists repeatedly.

“Want to take a break?” Kochanski inquires.

“A break? Well I’m just right on time then,” Lister says joyfully and the smile Rimmer pulls over his face feels like it’s been wrung out with a crowbar.

They do take a break, then resume working again, and that’s when Kryten joins in and then she leaves and comes back with dinner and they take a break, again. Cat also staggers along shortly after, yawning and dragging a pillow and a whole duvet behind him, then makes himself a little bed right by the Wildfire’s steps. Holly pops in now and then too and really, this is no different than the previous two days that they’ve been working here but it’s like something has been snowballing with each hour he spends here and he finds it hard to focus. He gets distracted by looking at the uneven seam on the shoulder of the sleeve of Lister’s leather jacket and he wants to ask how she end up ripping it like that and why she, most likely, had insisted on fixing it herself instead of asking Kryten for help. Blinking it out, the hours blur again until Kochanski dusts off his hands off one another loudly.

“I think we’re done here for today, don’t you think, Ace?” The name is foreign to his own ears.

“Right on,” Rimmer tries to assess how much work they’ve done and everything looks pretty solid. They could be finished by tomorrow. “Think we could even get it over with tomorrow, ey?” He says so, too, trying to sound cheerful and is met with nods of agreement from Kris and Kryten. He then turns his head back to look at Lister, who’s smoking by the porthole. After a beat he puts the screwdriver he’s been clutching in his hands down and makes his way over to her. Coming to stop by her side he first watches her take a drag out of her cigarette and she does it in exactly the same way his Lister does: first she takes a drag out of the cigarette and after bringing it out of her mouth she exhales a bit of the smoke before sucking it all in again with a deep inhale and then blows it out of her nose. He follows her gaze where she’s looking out of the porthole before it hits him.

Why on Ganymede and Titan does he remember the way Lister smokes.

He swallows heavily and the snowball finishes another lap.

“You think there’s another Ace ‘round there somewhere? Right now?” She asks, not tearing her eyes away from the porthole.

“Could be,” Rimmer replies shortly, feeling like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Funny stuff, this. Dunno how you deal with it,” she says and butts the half-finished cigarette on the sole of her boot and puts it behind her ear.

Rimmer gives no sign that he doesn’t know how he deals with it either.

He looks back at Lister and he’s met with her own stare and her expression is somehow perplexing and before he can put his finger on it, she blinks and it’s gone.

“Up for bevvies tonight?”

“Sorry, gotta say no,” Rimmer smiles in apology. “Some other time.”

Lister smirks and says nothing and guilt tugs at Rimmer’s light bee. She pats him on the shoulder as she turns around to leave and the weight of her hand lingers.

***

When he’s by himself back in his quarters, he’s restless.

He paces back and forth around the room, goes to find some sort of identification to whom these quarters might have belonged three million and seven years ago and finds nothing, which means that the last skeleton crew of this ship has rummaged through there.

Kryten must’ve been the one to clean it up, though.

He sits down on the bed and then instantly gets up, he goes to the porthole and looks out into the vastness of space and then sharply turns around.

There cannot possibly be a log right now, present in Red Dwarf’s cargo bay, that would help him deal with whatever this is.

He sits down on the bed again and his leg jiggles frantically. Instantly, at the conscious realisation that he’s been jiggling his leg there’s a pang of guilt and he presses his palm on his thigh as Lister’s voice in his head tells him that he’s gonna shake every single bolt in the cockpit loose.

Is he restless because he doesn’t want to leave? He didn’t want to be here in the first place. Of course, pre-test and pre-flight shakes are in order but he had a teeny weeny glimmer of hope that maybe he had learned how to tell it to piss off and die.

He thinks about the talk he had earlier with Kochanski. Rimmer could say that it was just a tad unexpected but it was not about the element of surprise, it was about the way Kris had spoken about his Lister. It was the determination to get back fueled by the power of love or whatever wishy washy crap they write about in romance novels Auntie Maggie used to read and argue that they were a dozen times more intellectual than any summer reading assignments they gave out at school.

Rimmer sighs.

He’s been here for too long. Kris has said something about an early night in and there’s a small chance anyone else might catch him being weird and sketchy around cargo bay at this hour but he doubts it would even arouse any suspicion. On the other hand, he can’t say for sure if he can wink, puff up and produce a bunch of one-liners even if someone held him at gunpoint right this second.

There’s an elevator going up right by his quarters.

Rimmer gets up and makes a beeline for the door out of his quarters, but a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror by the door frame glues him to a spot. His eyes skim over his frame in the reflection and he looks like an oil portrait a right-handed person did with their left hand.

He lifts his fingers to his forehead slowly and touches the empty spot in the middle but when he looks back down into his own eyes he but jumps and rapidly rubs his forehead with his palm. As he sharply exits, he strides along down the corridor in the direction of another elevator that can take him straight to the cargo bay. While going down, the infomercial on the screen sounds like a white noise that’s accompanied by the uneven taps of his foot against the floor. Just one peep at the next log, that’s all. This is just nerves and anxiety all bundled up together in a tight knot and if over the course of his Ace stint hearing one of his versions say some moronic bullshit turned into a way of seeking comfort then so be it.

The voice announces his destination and he exits without a thank you. His steps echo heavily and just as he expected, the cargo bay is empty but he can barely feel any relief at that. The closer he gets to the Wildfire, the heavier the stone around his neck gets but then with each step it’s like an impenetrable barrier is following along and there’s no way he can turn around now.

Once he’s in the ship, he lands heavily in his seat and stares at the monitor. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and then brings his palm over his forehead.

Well, turns out he only feels feverish.

The Wildfire has not said anything and Rimmer is just more grateful for it as he powers up the panel and selects log number two hundred and thirty four but he pauses it immediately and takes in this Ace alteration. Frozen on the screen he looks no different than Rimmer’s own reflection did mere seconds ago: he’s got no wig on and he’s wearing the suit, however Rimmer sees that he looks exhausted as he’s staring right into the camera with two dark shades underneath his eyes.

Rimmer presses play.

Ace looks frozen for a few more seconds but then he drops his gaze down and the silence is almost deafening. He then rubs his neck and looks up as he sighs and Rimmer’s own anxiety spikes because just the body language alone is loud enough. Ace’s throat works as he swallows and looks down again and Rimmer considers switching it off while he still can and he feels brave just for a split of a second when Ace rubs his eyes, but once he looks back there’s no way out again.

“I know you miss him.”

The ringing in Rimmer’s ears is so loud he might as well be actually, physically stunned. The words come bludgeoning at the back of his head and a cold shiver runs down his spine.

“Pause,” he croaks out before Ace can say anything else and spins in the chair with his back to the screen.

There’s no bleeding way the gimp is talking about who Rimmer thinks he’s talking about. He must’ve missed something. He buggered it up by trying to go back home for whatever idiotic excuse he’s come up with in his head and now this log is meant for some other wig-wearing dimension-jumping prat that would’ve got the hold of the ship next if, again, Rimmer hadn’t screwed everything up.

He could be talking about Father, for one. For whatever damn reason he could be talking about him and even openly spewing about things like ‘missing him’ or it simply could be anyone, literally anyone, why would Lister specifically be singled out.

Why is he so sure Ace was talking about Lister. He doesn’t miss Lister. There’s nothing about Lister to miss. Everyone gets a case of pining for the old times, however the times might have been, so a little jump back home is his sick note.

He spins back around.

Ace’s fixed stare invokes his instinct to cower and he fights it with all the might he has left that hasn’t been crushed under the weight of the sinking feeling in his guts.

He resumes the log.

It’s quiet for a few unbearably long moments and as Rimmer is about to pause it again, Ace sighs and looks down, with a tight smile over his face and Rimmer’s mouth freezes open.

“I know that,” Ace pauses, swallowing heavily. “I know that his presence would probably be the last thing you would ache for.”

Last time he thought of Father was a couple of weeks ago, when he was walking through the slums on some planetoid and watched a piece of slime slither down the wall.

“Weird, isn’t it,” Ace continues, dropping his eyes for a moment again and worrying his lower lip between his teeth. “To think that, wow, I’d really love to have a whiff of that undeniable aroma of cheap tobacco and stale lager right now.”

Another knot ties itself over Rimmer’s insides and his tongue feels heavy, so much so that he thinks he’s about to choke on it. A thin thread connects this same feeling he feels every time the Lister that he has been around for almost four days now comes in close proximity to him.

This couldn’t be why he is avoiding her, though. He hasn’t been avoiding her.

Ace sighs and looks somewhere to the side, as he settles deeper in his chair. “To simply wish,” his voice pitches higher. “To wish for the company of El Slobbo extraordinaire,” he gestures with his arms and his expression gets more confused. “And even entertaining the possibilitiy of not being averted to hear the gimp ruddy try and belch the whole of Auld Lang Syne, even though he’s never managed to get past the first verse,” it’s not Ace anymore, it’s him, it’s Rimmer, with his voice pitched high and he’s just talking to himself, his brows furrowed and he’s smiling in almost disbelief at his own words.

They’re both breathing heavily and Rimmer jumps a little when the other one looks straight into the camera again and his face falls.

“Missing the rest of the gang — that’s one thing,” his voice is low again or at least he tries his hardest for it to seem that way. “But, well. There’s your good old loneliness or homesickness, you name it. And then there’s,” he falls quiet again, looking down again. Rimmer takes such a deep breath it leaves him feeling a little lightheaded.

“And then there’s longing,” Ace begins again. “Saudade.”

“ _Pause!_ ” Rimmer says louder that he wants to, just barely regaining control of his vocal chords, as he spins back around in the chair and stands up so rapidly his head swims.

He’s been driven spare, that is. He’s been captured by some space maniac and been put into some machine that produces extremely realistic scenarios in his mind, that’s what’s happening. Rubbing his temples he looks back at the paused image of Ace on the screen and the bastard looks almost dreamy and sad and it makes Rimmer nauseous. He takes a step towards the panel and shuts down the log and powers down the ship entirely before she can say anything, though for a split second he feels properly watched.

In quick strides he exists the ship and there’s not a single coherent thought in his head as he blurts out his destination at the elevator.

This is stupid. He doesn’t miss Lister. There’s a Lister on this ship, right now, he can swing by and see her right now, she shouldn’t have gone to bed yet, she’s a Lister. He only feels stupid and awkward around her because this is just who he is, sticking our like a sore thumb everywhere and always. He feels just as stupid around this Kryten and this Cat and don’t even get him started on Kochanski, who’s a nice bloke overall, but Rimmer constantly feels like he’s walking on eggshells around him as he incessantly drivels on about “his Lister”.

Lister. Lister Lister Lister.

The elevator’s doors open quietly and Rimmer is afraid to move. Someone might see him and they will instantly know, someone’s gonna capture him and probe his mind and use this tempest brewing in his brain against him as a method to pry out the secrets of the universe.

Because apparently that’s what he rather spill out than admit that other thing.

Rimmer steps out into the empty corridor and suddenly exhaustion washes over him as if someone dunked a bucket of water over his head. He feels laid bare. He feels like someone peeked right into his innards, despite the fact that that “someone” was basically his own self. There must be a rational explanation for this. That bastard must have gone space crazy. Or who knows what kind of relationship there was between him and his Lister, or whatever, it’s none of his business. Rimmer hopes the goit’d liked the ring.

That last thought makes him swallow uneasily and starts walking towards his quarters with his head down. It’s simply baffling because he knows he doesn’t miss Lister and there’s a perfectly good reasoning backing that claim: that’s not the kind of relationship they had. Simple. If it can even be called a relationship at all. Why would he miss someone that brought him down and drove him mad and was overall the complete polar opposite of what Rimmer stood for and why would he miss someone who knew him inside and out and why would he miss someone who could push his every button without lifting a finger. Why would he miss someone without whom he wouldn’t be here right now.

Rimmer winces.

He just wants to go back to being himself. He wants to whine and complain, boss around and have a panic attack under one of the tables in what used to be Red Dwarf’s mess hall. The suit suddenly feels too tight on him and the collar of the turtleneck itches uncomfortably, and he enters his quarters averting his eyes from the mirror.

It will be over.

Although the clothes feel taut and suffocating, he lays down on the bed without undressing or even taking off the boots. The sooner tomorrow comes, the clearer will his head be.

He closes his eyes and doesn’t think about Lister.

Instead in a few hazy moments he’s back on his Red Dwarf and there’s Lister. And Kryten. And Cat. And Holly’s head is on the screen by their side and she’s wearing a tweed hat with a jerkbait dangling on the side and everyone’s dressed accordingly, holding fishing rods and nets and Rimmer feels scarcely underdressed and everyone’s looking at him impatiently and the lights in the quarters are too bright.

“C’mon, Rimmer,” Lister smirks and motions with his hand, as if calling him in. “We’re just waiting for ya.”

Rimmer opens his eyes with a startle and he’s still on Red Dwarf, except he knows it’s the wrong one and the seam of the flightsuit pant leg is digging uncomfortably into his thigh. He feels like he’s slept no more than an hour but when he lifts himself off the bed on his elbows to glance at the clock and it’s almost eight in the morning. He falls back onto the bed with a sigh; the apprehension caused by the events of last night is still there, fuelled by the images his subconsciousness has conjured up as if out of spite.

He closes his eyes and the shapes behind his eyelids start making out Lister’s smirking face he saw in the dream.

Rubbing his face, he gets up properly. Today they will finish working on the drive, he’ll do a test jump and then whatever happens, happens. He’s not about to turn the whole thing down just because his anxiety is firing up and some other Ace went cuckoo and started singing odes to no other than Dave Lister.

After cleaning up a bit, he goes back to the cargo bay and starts tinkering with the drive straight away. Kryten comes by a couple of hours later and insists on bringing him food, so he humours her. Kris comes by later, too, holding up tubes of paper and some stationery and with a silent nod Rimmer gives him the green light to put down some notes about the ship and the drive. He interjects sometimes, giving out some pieces of advice, answering Kochanski’s questions along the way.

Sometimes Rimmer sneaks an odd glance at Kryten, who’s been acting weird and very un-Kryten-like around Kochanski but he doesn’t want to make things tense, so he doesn’t poke his nose into it, but he’s curious and for a while he entertains possible conclusions in the back of his mind and it distracts him for a little while.

Everything goes well until Holly’s face appears on the screen.

“Fellas, I don’t want to frighten you, but we’re in a bit of a situation. Not enough for an alert of any kind, but it is... a situation,” she deadpans.

“What’s happening?” Rimmer says, putting the spanner down and feeling more annoyed than anything.

“Well. You better see for yourself,” Holly says, gesturing with her head towards the exit out of the cargo bay and they follow suit but just as they make it towards the lift, the doors woosh open and they’re met with Lister’s slightly frightened stare.

“Guys. I have two left arms.”

And as proof she lifts her arms as if in defeat and yes, indeed, they’re identical, unmirrored copies of one another.

“Cor blimey,” Kris sounds surprised, if anything.

“Ma’am!” Kryten yelps in turn and takes a quick step towards Lister into the lift. “Miss Lister, ma’am, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she replies and her voice is somehow calm. “Except me right arm’s gone! And I really, really do need that!”

Rimmer feels a prickly sensation washing over his right arm and he lifts his palms towards his face and the thumb of what used to be his right hand is facing outwards. Well.

“It’s happened to me too!” he hears Kris exclaim by his side.

“Holly!,” Rimmer calls for the AI and her face appears on the screen by the lift a moment later. “Holly, what’s going on?”

“Where the hell is the Cat?” Lister asks from behind him.

“Not sure yet,” Holly says. “But something is definitely changing your DNA sequences.”

“Yeah,” Kris is still staring at his palms. “We noticed that.”

“Science room, now,” Rimmer takes command out of habit but he feels tense the second the words leave his mouth, yet everyone follows him.

In the science room, Holly’s face is jumping from screen to screen and Rimmer wants to believe she’s gonna tell them exactly what’s happening and how to get out of there but he knows that’s the last thing that’s going to happen.

“So what’s up, Hol?” Lister speaks up.

“Not quite sure yet, but for now it seems like we’re in some sort of a radiation cloud.”

“And it’s altering our DNA in this way?”

“That’s the gist of it, yeah,” Holly blinks. “Oh, hold on. The density is getting thicker.”

“And that means...?” Lister asks again.

“We’ll have to see,” Holly shakes her head and jumps to another screen.

“I really don’t like this,” Kris says, trying to rub his palms together but it looks very uncoordinated. Rimmer’s own new, second left arm feels odd, it’s like it’s fallen asleep but he can still somehow feel it.

“Don’t fret, skipper,” he puts on the voice, because this is a situation he’s come to be familiar in the last couple of years. “We’ll deal with this.”

Cat stumbles into the science room right after.

“Guys,” he cries. “My right side doesn’t feel right anymore. It feels left! And there’s something wrong with my arms!”

“I got something,” Holly speaks up again and everyone turns their heads from Cat to the screen. “I caught the pattern of the DNA resequencing. You’re not gonna like this.”

“Holly, just say it like it is, please,” the image of Lister covering her face with two left hands is a bit freaky, Rimmer could admit it.

“As the density of the cloud thickens, the more... left your bodies become... I think...”

“Why isn’t Kryten affected then?

“Ma’am,” Krtyen speaks up. “I think it has something to do with the fact that I do not posses a DNA sequence as it is.”

“Yeah, that’s about right,” Holly doesn’t sound to assured. “But your brain is part organic. We can’t be sure nothing’s gonna happen.”

“So yer sayin’ we’re all screwed?” Lister sighs.

“Yeah.”

“God, look at me,” Lister cries out, holding out her two left hands in front of her. “I’m bleeding Joe Hart now!”

“Is there any way we can exit the cloud?” Rimmer asks, stifling down the panic rising in his throat.

“Not at the speed the ‘Dwarf is going at, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re in too deep now. And the longer we are here, everything in your bodies... unmirrors itself. Including your hearts.”

“And you're only just saying this now?!” Kochanski moves closer into Rimmer’s field of vision.

“I told you that you’re not gonna like the news!” Holly says defensively.

“But how is it affecting me, then?” Rimmer says after a little consideration.

“Don’t ask me, I’m not the weird mutation inducing cloud expert here,” Holly says, a bit uptight. “Maybe your hard-light form is confusing it. Whatever it is.”

“But if it’s still affecting me and Kryten to an extent, will Red Dwarf be alright at all?”

“I think the Dwarf is just simply too huge for any drastic changes.”

“Will we be back to normal though?” Lister speaks up again and another wave of searing panic washes over Rimmer.

“Good addition, skipper,” Rimmer squeaks.

“Most likely. I can’t be sure now, I need to get in more closely on that.”

“Oh God! What are we gonna do!” Cat wails throwing his arms up. “How am I ever gonna sleep again! I only can fall asleep on my right side! What am I going to do!” He takes a step forward and trips, falling splat on the floor and gives out another incoherent cry.

“Please don’t tell me he’s got two left feet now,” Lister sighs, not looking at Cat.”

“Yep,” is the unilateral response of Kochanski, Rimmer and Kryten.

Lister sighs, shaking her head and then skims her eyes over the readings.

“Well, judging by your dancing skills, you shouldn’t be expecting any change with your feet, eh, Lister,” Rimmer mumbles without thinking and then alarm washes over him as Lister gives him a slightly mockingly offended look in return but she does it with a little smile. Rimmer tries to put on an apologetic smile while he curses himself for getting so comfortable that he let his mouth run.

“Can’t Starbug pull through it fast enough?” Rimmer asks, trying really hard to put on the Ace voice again, ignoring any pointed stares that might be aimed his way.

“Probably, but the density of the cloud is pretty unstable. There are areas where it’s less thick and then there are areas that might as well be deadly for you.”

“And Starbug is hard to manoeuvrer in close spaces,” Rimmer finishes for her. He scrambles for a solution in his head, ignoring every possible urge to flee and scatter. “Can the Wildfire manage?”

“Think so. Might be a better shot than Starbug. Except the radiation is messing up your polarities too.”

“Meaning?” Lister pipes up but then Kochanski’s sharp loud yelp turns everyone’s heads on him and they see him sitting on the floor right beside a chair with a pained expression, trying to reach to rub his hurt backside.

“That’s what I mean. So navigating it will be a whole other challenge.”

“Then what are we supposed to do, you senile idiot?” Kochanski says, still sitting on the floor

“Oi, shut it. I’m thinking.”

“Holly, I’m gonna ask you to be a little swifter with that thinking,” Lister gets visibly nervous, too.

“Okay, alright, there, I’m putting up the approximate map of the field but it goes as far as my sensors can allow. And it’s ready. I think I can download it straight into the Wildfire right away.”

“Then our main task right now is to make it into the cargo bay on time,” Rimmer says, sighing.

“Alright then, gals and pals, no better time than the present,” with that Lister turns for the door, trying to balance herself but almost falls, barely saved by Kryten’s extended arm.

“Miss Lister and sirs, I think it would be best to try and hold on to me, since for now I am the least affected.”

“Kryters, I love ya but your eye sockets are like two merry-go-rounds right now. I’m gettin’ motion sickness.”

Rimmer looks up and it’s true — Kryten’s eyeballs are spinning at an almost disturbing velocity.

“Still, ma’am, I’m at better capability to navigate us all to the landing bay.”

And so they do that. They crawl through the corridors towards the lift like they’re going against a nasty wind current, holding onto Kryten’s limbs. Kryten herself makes slow and careful steps, steering just slightly to the left.

“Man, this is how I usually walk after chugging five Smirnoff Ices,” Lister laughs with an air of panic.

Just barely, they do make it to the cargo bay and then one by one they literally climb on all fours into the Wildfire and Rimmer almost misses his seat just like Kris has back in the science room, but still manages to land his bottom in place and powers up the ship.

“Ace?” the Wildfire speaks up, speaking like she’s just roused from a deep sleep. “Something the matter? You ran off so quickly last night, I didn’t even have a chance to talk to you...”

Rimmer almost rips off the armrest off the chair.

“Um,” he prays and hopes no one pays this any mind. “What? Nothing— Can we talk about this later? We have a more pressing matter on hand, please,” he clears his throat and brings up the map Holly composed on the screen. He closes shuts the door into the ship and boots everything up properly, missing every odd button when he uses what used to be his right arm. This isn’t great.

“Alright, Holly, raise the doors. We’re going out for a little stroll.”

They take off with little trouble, though everyone keeps veering off to the left and overall everything is too chaotic. Rimmer fights off a momentarily urge to crash the Wildfire into Red Dwarf. How much did she see? Is she going to talk about it right now? When everyone’s around? When they kinda face some pretty grave danger?

“Ace! Ace, man, not the best time to space out!” Lister shouts at him and Rimmer feels like he’s sinking. Keeping appearance is the last thing on his mind right now.

“Alright,” yet he tries to. He blinks and it feels like someone is trying to cover his right eye. “Someone has to look at the map while I’m piloting and tell me where to go. My vision’s getting impaired.”

Cat’s loud snore echoes in the back and it makes the whole situation even more obnoxious and ridiculous.

“Kris, your pilot training still any good?”

“Think so.”

“Lend me a hand here, please,” Rimmer clicks something and Kochanski’s seat moves further to the console.

“That’s about the only thing I can do at the moment,” Kris says sorely.

“Kryten, Lister,” he winces at another slip but goes on, pulling up screens with the map forward to them. “You’re on.”

Rimmer feels terrible about taking control but because for them he’s still stupid bloody Ace Rimmer, so it probably was expected of him and he resents it. He really, really resents it and the bitter taste of it stings at the back of his throat.

“Sir, turn 3 mark 7!”

The Wildfire shakes violently.

“10 mark 8!”

“1 mark 15! Ten thousand gigooks, Mr Ace, sir!”

“Ace, my love, be careful!”

“Guy, it’s closing in! 10 mark 7!”

Cat snores loudly.

“Mark 6.5!”

Everyone breathes out in relief when they rocket out of the radiation cloud and with relief Rimmer looks down and not only both of his eyes work right again, his hands are back too.

“Think we done here?” Kris asks him and he just shrugs in response.

“We gotta go around it and wait for the Dwarf to clear it. Might be some time.”

“I’m not dying with two left arsecheeks!” Lister yelps happily and that gains an eye-roll from Kochanski.

Rimmer shuffles his feet around just to make sure everything is back in place and plots the course around the field; Holly also shook out some approximate coordinates where Red Dwarf would emerge but Rimmer lets the Wildfire do it herself just to make sure.

It takes some time to steer around and a little over two hours until they catch up with the Dwarf. In the meantime they play a game of spot the stain on Lister’s long johns and Rimmer is having a hard time reminding himself that he is leaving this place soon.

They fly into the cargo bay more accurately than they have flown out and the exhaustion is palpable, even Cat, who was asleep almost the entire time, looks spent.

Rimmer waits for everyone to start leaving the ship and Lister is the last one before him, so he follows her out.

“Man,” she shakes her head, breathing out. “I really need a drink after that.”

“Can’t disagree,” Rimmer says with a hint that doesn’t escape Lister and she turns her head around with a wide smile.

“Took you some time, huh,” she stops at the foot of the stairs, waiting for Rimmer to catch up and when he does, she pats him on the shoulder. “We scavenged some dog rose whiskey on one of the planetoids a couple of weeks back. It’s the good kind, I promise.”

Rimmer exhales loudly: being in a close proximity to her is a bit jarring because despite going back to square one with the “number of days we had since our last near fatal experience”, Lister’s touch is an instant reminder of the wind whirl his mind has been putting him through for the past 24 hours.

He looks back at the Wildfire and only just realises that thankfully last night he’s had half a mind to power the ship down properly and close the blasted log.

Shaking his head, he’s glad he’s being somehow subtle at least and he just follows along.

They make it to Lister’s quarters, where she fetches the two bottles of whiskey and everything goes by easily, the relaxed conversations filling up the rooms. Holly even prepares Kryten a drink, Cat downs one shot and goes to snore in the corner and four shots in they draw a moustache on him and take an exaggerated pic with him. Six shots in Lister shoots a dart into Kryten’s head and Kris retires to bed, excusing himself by saying he wouldn’t want anything fly into his own head. Rimmer is nicely drunk by this point, his face is a little numb and he feels warm and Lister is trying to balance herself up on one chair leg but as she, inevitably, starts falling, Kryten tries to catch her as Lister’s loud laughter fills up the room. Cat snores in the corner.

Rimmer realises that he actually feels alright and he’s glad he doesn’t let any thinking occur.

Some time later Kryten leaves, too, saying something about maintenance but Rimmer’s head feels too heavy to register what she said exactly, and simply bids her goodnight. Cat shakes awake pretty soon too, and just groggily leaves the room without saying a word. Rimmer looks over at Lister sitting opposite of him and nursing her whiskey and when their eyes meet Rimmer is suddenly aware that they’re alone.

“Y’know,” Lister begins, taking a sip. “It’s been real good having you here. Honest.”

“Likewise,” Rimmer says, his voice sounding small.

“Sometimes, I think,” Lister continues, “If she’s also out there, somewhere. Has she tried making it back? Is she even alive?” She shakes her head and downs her glass.

“Well,” trying to reach for any words left in his inebriated brain, Rimmer goes for a vague reply. “Every Rimmer’s different. You know how it is.”

“Yeah, but you,” she points at him, setting the glass down on the table. “You’re so much like her, man. It’s eerie.”

Rimmer’s nostrils flare and he looks down at his feet and his thoughts scramble, looking for what to say.

“See!” Lister exclaims again and Rimmer looks up. “That’s— the nostrils. That’s her.”

Rimmer rubs his face and he feels hot and he wants another drink and he reaches for the bottle to pour the remains in his glass.

“I see it,” Lister wordlessly moves her own glass closer to Rimmer with a hint. “Like today in the science room and while we were leggin’ it from the smeggy cloud. Y’know, the wig and the voice, I get that, but underneath there,” she points again, almost with a hint of accusation in her voice and puts her hand down. “It’s you,” she finishes and her face looks somehow smug; she’s drunker than Rimmer would have expected her to be after having drunk fairly little. Must be something in the whisky, because his own head is buzzing too much and he doesn’t trust his tongue.

“It’s what I had to do,” Rimmer says, going for another sip of whiskey.

“Well, what I’m saying is— I’m saying let it go for a bit, man. _Unwind_ ,” she slurs a little and stretches out her words. “Drop the mask,” she gestures comically and Rimmer wets his lips, considering.

He downs the rest of his glass in one gulp, winces and clears his throat.

“Listy,” he begins, relaxing his vocal cords and it already feels good. “Our ideas of ‘unwinding’ differ tremendously, where for once,” he pauses, setting down the glass and wipes his mouth. “I don’t need to get pished out of my mind to get a kick out of life,” he finishes pompously and for a second he feels better than he’s felt in days. Maybe even weeks.

Lister claps her hands together once and howls with laughter. “That’s right, yeah! That’s the Rimmer I know and—,” she stutters and swallows but Rimmer is too drunk to pay that any attention. “That’s the Rimmer I know,” her smile is wide and she doesn’t break the eye contact, and Rimmer smiles back just a little.

“I lied though,” he looks at the now empty bottle on the table. “I d’need to get pished. Sometimes.”

Lister chuckles again, taking another sip. “That you do. And maybe play the space hero for a bit.”

“Yeah,” Rimmer laughs quietly but he doesn’t mean it, dropping his eyes and looking at Lister’s hands.

They sit in silence for a little while and then Lister pours some more whiskey into her glass and raises it.

“To you, Ace Rimmer or Not-Ace, but still Rimmer.”

Rimmer clinks his own glass with hers and they drink to that.

After a few moments, Rimmer can’t help his mouth. “How did she—,” he begins rapidly, not used to the sound of his own voice and pauses. “How did me— leave. How did she leave?”

Lister looks to the side for a moment, rubbing her neck. “I had to trick her, y’know. Just a bit. I pretended to be a knight on the loose from the AR machine and loaded the bazookoid with a spare,” she chuckles at the memory and the lightbulb in Rimmer’s head lights up.

“That goity bastard,” he exclaims and Lister raises her brows. “I think my Lister did the same.”

His tongue suddenly feels too heavy for his mouth.

“Great minds think alike, Rimmer,” she downs her drink and hearing his name slurred in the Scouse twang sends a hot flash down his spine.

“Do you miss her?” Rimmer asks boldly and his voice is hoarse.

Lister chuckles, looking down and chews on the inside of her cheek for a bit. “Yeah, I think I do,” she blinks and sighs. “I do.”

She doesn’t ask the same question in return and he’s glad.

They’re both quiet for a moment and Rimmer looks at the traces left by the chairs moving on the floor and he’s drunk now, he is drunk and he doesn’t word the thought properly before it leaves his mouth.

“When I just got ‘ere, you asked me what kinda Ace I was. What did you mean by that?”

Lister takes a deep breath and he feels her eyes on him. “When I was trying to assure her to leave, I said something along these lines. Like, that she could be a different kinda Ace, all that smeg. So it was just s’mthing that came to mind first, is all.”

“I’m sure she’s doing good, whenever she is,” he looks up as he says it and he means it.

Lister shakes her head. “Y’know, I had this dream soon after she left,” she begins, with a small laugh. “I had a dream she was back and she was all smiles and jokes, she was... She was Rimmer, but different.”

Rimmer notices his leg has been jiggling for some time now.

“And then we kissed,” Lister deadpans and Rimmer chokes on nothing. “Just full on snoggin’, tongues ‘n all,” she continues, staring into nothing. “Can y’believe that?”

His simulated heartbeat thumps so loudly in his ears for a second he believes that Lister can hear it too, and he thinks that he is both drunk and not drunk enough for this. Really, can he believe that? Somehow he doesn’t want to answer that.

Rimmer blinks and looks around the room, feeling queasy, and when he looks back at Lister, she’s looking right back at him.

“That’s,” he swallows. “Quite extraordinary,” he’s surprised he manages to pronounce it without turning it into a jumble of sounds.

“D’you think she misses me?” Lister says, looking away and her voice sounds small.

“Well,” Rimmer begins, not sure if he’s supposed to say what wants to burst out of him. “If she’s as similar as me as you say then... Then I’d say most likely yes. Probably,” he shakes his head sharply. “I mean she does.”

Next thing Rimmer sees is Lister standing up from her chair in a rush and she smashes their mouths together, holding him by the fur collar of his suit. She tastes like whiskey and there’s so much tongue and saliva as he answers the kiss without thinking. It’s sloppy and they keep clashing teeth and as it goes on Lister’s fervour drains away, and Rimmer feels more and more awkward and it just doesn’t really feel good.

They pull apart a moment later and they’re both breathing heavily and not looking at one another.

“I feel like I just kissed me boyfriend’s twin brother,” says Lister and Rimmer is somehow relieved.

“Yeah, it wasn’t. Ideal, to say the least.”

With a sigh Lister staggers backwards into her chair. “Sorry, guy. Kinda thought it was the right thing to do. ‘twas stupid.”

“No, no,” he says quickly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and when he looks up and he meets her eyes he suddenly feels more sober. “That was, yeah. For a second I thought that was what I wanted, too,” honesty that he’s not sure he’s meant to uncover for his own self stings and he feels his throat closing up. “It was just—”

“Wrong,” Lister finishes. “Fairly decent, but wrong.”

“Yeah.”

“God,” Lister laughs quietly and humourlessly and wipes her mouth. “Who would’ve thought.”

“Don’t need to tell me that,” Rimmer drums his fingers on his thigh and he wishes something would explode somewhere nearby just so he would have a valid excuse to leg it. Actually, smeg it.

He rubs his palms on his thigh and stands up, “I’ll go, I think. There are things I have to do and—”

“Rimmer, wait, hold on,” Lister stands up too. “This fuckin’ sucks, man. I just— I wanted to make sure that we’re alright, yeah?”

“Sure, no problem at all, everything’s alrighty-roo,” he says in a hurry and he feels his hands trembling.

“Okay, okay,” Lister exhales loudly. “Goodnight.”

Rimmer salutes her and in unsteady strides makes it for the door and just as he punches the button for them to open, Lister speaks up again.

“’m sure your Lister misses you too.”

Rimmer pauses for a second, looking at his shaking hand hovering over the button and exits without saying anything.

The corridors seem more hollow than ever and there’s a ghost of a headache pricking at his temples, but the aftertaste in his mouth has nothing to do neither with the alcohol or what has just occurred between him and Lister. He doesn’t realise his legs brought him back onto the Wildfire until he’s climbing the stairs to the ship and he knows why he’s here but he resists admitting it to himself and his mind is void of any thought as he puts on the log he hasn’t finished the night before.

Seeing Ace on the screen sends a wave of resentment over Rimmer and he forwards the log a bit.

“... there’s longing,” Ace pauses. “Saudade.”

Just like the first time, the last word lands like a blow to his guts and he tugs at the collar of his turtleneck.

“Eh, Listy, Listy...” Ace drawls out, looking into nothing and he chuckles softly to himself, and Rimmer thinks the whiskey might be making its way back from where it came in. Ace looks back and Rimmer feels like he’s looking right at him, through time and dimensions and by Io, he wants to run.

“Now, I don’t know what was your relationship with him like,” he shrugs exaggeratedly but then lets out a contemplative sigh. “But one tends to learn something new about himself while faced with the absence of something that hasn’t been revolving around him for what feels like forever.”

Rimmer shudders.

“Ace out,” and the screen goes black.

What a pompous, self assured git. This isn’t factual at all, he’s spent countless hours daydreaming of his possible life as a captain of his own vessel and was Lister ever there? In his daydreams? He only ever daydreamed about smashing Lister’s guitar over his head. He daydreamed about setting his bunk bed on fire, because it seemed like the only way it would get clean. In all fairness, the memory of the events of when he accidentally populated that certain planetoid with copies of himself and spent half a dozen centuries there were erased from his mind in a unanimous decision, so whatever he could be thinking during that time doesn’t count and he doesn’t cling to it.

This is wrong. He’s drunk. He’s drunk and this Lister was drunk, and she came onto him and it set everything asunder. He doesn’t miss Lister. He just feels a slight longing for that life that Lister was an unfortunate part of, that is all. Being Ace screwed his head over and when he comes back to his Red Dwarf, everything will be in its right place.

The last thing left for him to do is to stop thinking about Lister.

“It’s your fault, you smug ninny,” he points at the screen that’s showing a selection of logs.

“Ace is never wrong, you know,” Wildfire speaks up suddenly and Rimmer jumps a little. Her voice sounds somehow arrogant and he can clearly imagine her facial expression, if she, well, had a face. “Ace always knows best.”

Rimmer pointedly ignores her.

She lets out a humourless chuckle and goes quiet, and Rimmer can’t bring himself to care. He doesn’t think that suddenly the Wildfire has turned on him and sees him for what he is; finally someone does, in the longest time. He just wants this to be done with: he will jump back, he will realise that being alone in space for too long messed with his head somewhat and he’ll be as good as new. It will be better than a hard reset.

He grimly thinks that he’d rather do a hard reset on his light bee than this and rubs his face with his hands. Deal with the problems as they come, Rimmer says to himself as he powers down the ship and climbs out. A deep inhale of the cargo bay’s even more heavily conditioned air makes his insides feel leaden and during that brief moment where he pauses to look at the stars through the cargo bay’s porthole he doesn’t think about anything at all and then he wishes he was able to maintain that.

When the next day comes, it feels like an eternity has passed. Rimmer wakes up from a dreamless sleep, groggy and barely coordinating his movements, for which he blames the aftermath of yesterday’s escapades with the radiation cloud and definitely not anything else. He knows that either he leaves for his dimension tonight or he will never have the guts to do it.

However, when he comes by the cargo bay later, hoping he’s just been lucky to have avoided everyone, he’s greeted by the sight of Kochanski and Lister already working on the drive. They notice him instantly and wave at him in greeting and he waves back with a tight smile, almost wanting to just turn away and run out of there. Kris picks up one of his plans and moves towards the Wildfire just as Rimmer comes closer to their makeshift working place and that leaves him and Lister by themselves.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he tries to break the ice but it barely leaves a crack.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Lister shrugs. “Thought I’d get some hours workin’ here.”

“I appreciate it,” is all Rimmer can say, feeling lost for words. “I mean all this— your help. I really appreciate it.”

“No biggie, man,” Lister smiles looking at him, but when she looks back to cover the side of the drive with one of its lids, her face drops instantly. Rimmer watches her, quietly, trying to think of something to say but he feels like the biggest fool in the universe.

“I was gonna say,” he begins, not even having formed the thought in his head properly and not bothering with the Ace voice. “I wanted to say that— I don’t know actually,” he rubs his face helplessly. “I don’t know what I wanted to say.”

“’s alright,” she looks up at him and gives him a little smile again, but this time it stays. “I understand.” He wants badly to ask what is what it is that she understands, because he seems to be at a loss here.

He almost goes for it, but Lister douses the attempt.

“It’s almost ready to go,” she says, patting the drive with her hand. “When’re you planning on leavin’?”

“Well, I thought I’d leave as soon as I can,” or never. He sighs and pretends he doesn’t see something overcome Lister’s expression, as he briefly looks in the direction of the Wildfire. “What I didn’t say before,” he begins again, dropping his gaze. “I didn’t say why I needed this damned drive fixed,” the words come out of him heavy, he’s almost forcing them out, but it feels like a life or death situation.

Well, death or double-death, in his case.

When he looks up back at Lister, her face surprises him. Her expression is, indeed, understanding. She’s looking at him like he’s a labrador puppy that’s pissed all over the carpet.

“I’m trying to go back. To my Red Dwarf. To my dimension. That’s— yeah,” Rimmer doesn’t feel any easier when he says that; it’s the opposite — he feels like a bigger idiot now.

“Alright,” Lister nods. “Good for you, Rimmer.”

“What?” Rimmer barks, surprised.

“I mean, it would really do you good, I think,” she shrugs. Somewhere in the back Kochanski is talking to the Wildfire but the sound of their voices is almost completely drowned out in Rimmer’s ears by the thumping of his heart.

“No, I mean— I mean why? Why do you think it will be good for me?” his voice breaks and he realises he’s managed to take a screwdriver in his hands and he’s been fidgeting with it for some time now.

“What, you think about backin’ out?” she crosses her arms on her chest.

“No!” he lies quickly and Lister knows it’s a lie and Rimmer knows that she knows. “I mean— What the hell. Maybe. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m thinking about not going through with this.”

“But why?”

“Because,” he exhales deeply. “Because I don’t know what I am doing, Listy. I’m not sure I ever did with this whole Ace stint but this just takes the cake. Like, what do I expect to find there? Some consolation prize? String theory, reinvented? A Tesco meal deal? What if nothing’s changed? What if everything changed so much it will just be pointless?” He’s out of breath a little by the time he’s finished.

“You have changed though.”

Rimmer feels his ears burning.

“And?”

“That means everything will be different, whether you want it or no,” Lister shrugs and Rimmer doesn’t want the stupid pep talk but it’s too late.

“Somehow I very much doubt that.”

“You won’t know unless you try,” Lister says it almost automatically. “Or however the saying goes.”

“No, but, like what is the reason? I don’t even know why I’m doing what I’m doing and I don’t know if I care to find out, like what’s the point!”

Lister sighs and rolls her eyes. “Actually, forget what I said about you changing. You’re still a smeghead, Rimmer.”

“Hey, hold on now—”

“You have _no_ idea what it’s like,” she interrupts him but doesn’t raise her voice. “To sit here and hear you drivel about this shite, while I have no idea whether my Ri—Arle— whether the other one is doing the same. I could have used my own feelings of conflicting nature to push you into going back, because sorry, guy, but you’re gullible as fuck. But I’m not gonna do that, man. I’m just gonna say go. It’s your choice, like, but it’s also your choice to pick a way to deal with whatever you’re gonna be faced with over there.”

Rimmer swallows heavily.

“S’mthing like that,” Lister finishes, quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Rimmer says after a few moments, avoiding Lister’s eyes.

“You don’t have to be sorry, man, that’s the point.”

“I feel like I’m just running back with my tail between my legs,” he shrugs, still not looking up.

Something clinks and the sound echoes through the cargo bay but neither of them even budge.

“I actually think what you’re doing here is kinda brave,” Lister says quietly.

Rimmer raises his head sharply. “Huh?”

Lister shrugs, scratching her head. “Like, you’re risking your life with this thing, right? You seem determined, man,” she smiles tightly. “It’s a good look on you.”

“Thanks,” Rimmer mumbles in response and the sinking feeling weighs down heavily in his stomach.

“Besides, you can always come back here, just in case,” Lister says with a wink and Rimmer breathes out a laugh.

“Hardy har, Listy. Be quiet, people are gonna start talking.”

Lister opens her mouth in fake surprise. “Oh my God! Is this flirting I hear?” She puts her hand on her chest. “You truly have changed, man. There’s no going back now.”

“Piss off.”

Lister laughs in response and they resume working on the drive, sharing small conversations and Rimmer tries not to dwell on her words about him having changed. If he really changed, would his cowardice still be sounding every possible alarm?

They finish working on the drive by noon. Kryten whips up a little goodbye meal, as she’s called it herself, and they dine right on the cargo bay floor, sitting over a patterned blanket Lister nicked from somewhere.

Holly’s face is on some old electronic tablet, propped against a cheese plate.

“Again, I can’t thank you all enough,” Rimmer begins, over his bottle of beer.

“It means,” Everything. “… a lot,” he can’t help his voice faltering a little.

“Cheers, man,” Lister raises her own bottle. “Thank you, too. This was a nice change of scene for a bit.”

“Your presence is always welcome here, Mr Ace!”

“Cheers, Kryten.”

“Thanks for letting me look over the drive, too,” Kochanski says and Rimmer turns his head sharply over at him and then glances at Lister warily, but he gets noticed.

“Yeah, he told me,” Lister takes a swig from her bottle. “It’s cool.”

“You think I’d be able to build something like that and just run off without anyone noticing?” Kris laughs softly, shaking his head.

“Not the weirdest thing that has happened on the ship.”

“Soon it’s just gonna be Kryters here, the moggy and me,” Lister says, having set her bottle down and clasping each of her hands on Kryten and Cat’s shoulders respectively.

The silence that follows is not comfortable, to say the least and Lister does look guilty for a split second, clearly not meaning to cause such an effect. And Rimmer feels as guilty as she looked.

“You’ll be alright,” Kris says. “There will be something, Deb.”

“In the impactful, somehow paraphrased words of Demonsmoke Barleychaser, there’s always,” Kryten emits a censoring bleep, “something.”

“Never been more spot on,” Lister slaps Kryten’s shoulder trying to smile and it weighs on Rimmer even more.

When he packs what little things he’s taken out of the Wildfire at all, it’s still there and it hasn’t got any smaller. He takes the damned wig in his hands and shakes it around, subduing the desire to chuck it out of the airlock.

There will be time for that later.

Everyone got out to bid him farewell in the cargo bay and this scene is almost the same as when he just got here. They shake his hand, and there’s awkward hugging and for a moment he hopes that everyone grows three smegging left arms this time and when he approaches Lister he thinks if he wishes for it very hard it just might happen.

“Take care, Debbie girl,” he says, half mocking the voice, but to his ears it comes out pathetic. Lister still laughs and goes for a hug.

“See ya later,” after they part she slaps her forehead with the back of her hand in a mock salute.

When Rimmer boards the Wildfire he turns around to wave at everyone again and the sight of them sends a cold shiver down his body and his light bee flips.

“Let’s get this over with,” he murmurs to himself as he powers the ship up and types in the needed coordinates and data in the drive. He still has to travel a bit to get to the correct approximate coordinates, but it’s nothing.

He still can back out.

“Ace, everything will be just fine, I believe in you!” the Wildfire says and Rimmer wonders why she even keeps up at it.

Maybe for the same reason he had for the past two years.

He is steadily gaining speed and as he gets closer to the needed point, the weight over his shoulders grows.

“Ready?” he asks mostly himself.

Again, there’s a familiar view, not unlike a small wormhole he’s observed in the deep cosmos over the years, time and space combust and contract around him and he takes a deep breath as a blazing flash of light illuminates everything in an instant.

Rimmer opens his eyes when the brightness isn’t trying to claw through his eyelids anymore and his heart skips a beat.

He sees Red Dwarf.


	3. i keep wishing and hoping and praying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are ! kinda happening but then maybe not. again apologies if this is too crammed or fully indecipherable this is the only way i can write. thank u for being here

Rimmer’s first thought is that nothing has happened: they have somehow fucked up putting up the drive together and he just made one giant loop around some light years of vacuum.

But the coordinates would be different in that case, a rational part of his brain supplies. It’s the one that’s silent 99 percent of his waking being, so he promptly chooses to ignore it.

He looks at Red Dwarf.

The ship is huge, stupendous even, and seeing her from afar has always hitched his breath in some peculiar way.

No one has seemed to have noticed his presence yet, so he tries hailing Red Dwarf himself.

Silence.

“Damn you,” he utters, hitting the panel in frustration. If there are angry tears welling up in his eyes — he wouldn’t ever admit it, but in that little time between opening his eyes and right now now he’s come to be beyond giving up. 

“Ace! But we have arrived where we were supposed to!” The Wildfire sounds confused but Rimmer can’t bring himself to say that this is wrong, it was all for nothing and they should just leave; it claws at the back of his throat unpleasantly.

He hails Red Dwarf again. And one more time.

Still nothing.

He can’t believe this. Either he’s too early or he’s too late. Something has happened. Maybe they haven’t caught up to Red Dwarf yet and they’re wandering somewhere, hundreds or even thousands of light years away from here, or maybe they did catch up, but something drastic has happened and just thinking about it sets his panic loose.

But why is he here then? What did the drive even latch onto? Why has he arrived at these coordinates?

“Ace, there’s a—”

“Forget it,” Rimmer interrupts the Wildfire roughly. “We bottled it.” He was actually right all along. There was no point in doing this in the first place. Despair washes over him in a stone-cold ripple and he just wants to turn around and never look back.

“No, Ace, look—,” and then, as if through a thick layer of cotton he actually hears it.

“Someone’s hailing us,” his hands are shaking so badly he misses the button to decipher the signal.

The transmission is JMC issued.

It’s Starbug.

Rimmer feels very stupid.

He takes another moment before he’s at the point of no return and answers the hail.

Between the moments when he presses the button and the image gets projected on the screen, aeons have flown by and then the picture goes live.

It’s Lister.

“Ace?!”

And Kryten. And Cat. 

“Mr Ace, sir?!”

And someone else is in the back: Rimmer sees a flash of red and— is that Kochanski?

“Man, I thought this rumble was way too familiar!”

He might be wrong anyway. This could be all wrong.

“Hey, is the transmission frozen?”

Rimmer blinks forcefully and realises he’s yet to say anything and there are four expectant faces looking at him.

“Um,” is all he can muster and he tries to hide the lack of any coherent thought behind coughing right after.

He really should’ve planned this ahead.

“Starbug to Ace,” Lister says almost a little hopefully and Rimmer wants to end the transmission, put the pedal to the metal and never set foot here again.

“Ah, yes, that’s— that’s me,” he barely musters the strength not to wince at his own words, but goes on. “Real nice I ran into you, old chums.” He takes a deep breath. “I do need— I do need some help, if you will be so kind,” Rimmer continues. He can barely keep the voice up and he knows that it hasn’t escaped at least someone’s notice.

“‘Course, man,” Lister doesn’t sound too sure, for one, and Rimmer just wants this to be over. “Be our guest.”

“Mr Ace, if you would gladly follow us into Red Dwarf.”

Rimmer nods curtly and the transmission cuts.

His mouth feels impossibly dry and his leg is jiggling so hard his knee is bumping into the panel. Why is he here? This was a mistake. What is he going to say? Wasn’t he just going to pretend to be some different Ace and call it a day? His hands are still shaking as he pilots the Wildfire behind Starbug onto the landing pad in the ‘Dwarf’s cargobay and his stomach is in so many knots there’s enough to make a rope ladder.

He still can turn back.

After landing the ship, he exits on his barely functioning legs and the sight of four people standing by, waiting for him, makes him almost nauseous. He has just said goodbye to basically those same people, except the main difference being that these people know him, most of them do anyway, supposedly they do know him and that thought strikes him with dread.

“Long time no see, man,” Lister speaks up, going for shaking his hand. You have no idea, Lister, is what Rimmer wants to say, but he keeps quiet. There’s a peculiar glint in Lister’s eyes and the handshake is a bit jittery but Rimmer blames it on his own nerves.

“You don’t smell right, bud,” Cat pipes up and just a ghost of a shadow of hope passes through Rimmer. “You sure these people can’t help you?” he points at the rest of the gang, all of them still looking at Rimmer intently.

“Sure, I’m just peachy,” Rimmer almost squeaks and panic grips his throat, ready to erupt any second now if he’s not going to do something. 

Everyone’s looking at him.

“Mr Ace, it’s always a pleasure having you here with us but what was the emergency that brought you here?” Kryten inquires, eyes wide and for what seems like a millionth time in the past 30 minutes Rimmer is lost for words. He looks at Lister. The look that he’s met with bars on downright suspicious and Rimmer again, feels hopeful. He just needs to get out of this.

Why couldn’t this be simple.

It could’ve been, probably, if Rimmer wasn’t such a fucking idiot.

“I just need a, um,” he prays that if someone was planning to attack Red Dwarf, now would be the perfect time. “I needed,” Rimmer looks around quickly and the silence has begun to stretch too much. 

He looks back at Lister and grabs him by his upper arm.

“I just need to borrow Skipper here for a moment, if no one minds,” not waiting for an answer, he starts walking towards the exit out of the landing bay, dragging Lister behind himself. The leather of his jacket feels uncomfortable under Rimmer’s sweaty palm and he considers letting go for a moment but instead grips harder. Lister thankfully complies easily and lets himself be dragged, following along without saying a word.

Once they’re out into the corridor and out of the earshot, Rimmer still doesn’t have a slightest idea of what he’s going to say. He walks just a bit further, the scrap of their boots over the metal floors echoing heavily, and then he lets go of Lister’s arm; turning on his heels sharply he’s met with a look that is now fully indecipherable. 

He tries not to dwell on it while he still can avoid it. The dwelling, that is.

“So, um,” Lister begins, rocking on his heels. “What was that you wanted to tell m—”

“Are you my Lister?” Rimmer interrupts him, louder than he intended to and loud enough that it echoes a little. “Are you— are you the Lister that,” Rimmer’s mind scrambles for any significant memory. “Remember when we almost got killed by our future selves and then had to prance around to save our existence and accidentally un-assassinated JFK?” He’s a little out of breath, words sputtering out of him.

“Yes,” Lister stretches out raising his eyebrows.

“And then there was that time where that whole business with the triplicator went to smeg and you ended up with some body-controlling thing jammed up your neck.”

“Yeah, yeah, that happened,” Lister nods eagerly, smiling and Rimmer feels a drop of sweat roll down his temple.

“And then when I got trapped onto that psy-moon by my own low self-esteem there was—”

“Yeah, man, there was—”

“And also when we scavenged that derelict and I caught that holo-virus—”

“Rimmer, it’s—” Rimmer’s mouth closes shut. “Is this _really_ you?”

Rimmer stutters and blinks.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me.” Relief washes over him just for a moment until Lister moves closer as if going for a hug, but Rimmer’s sharp intake of breath halts him, so he settles on putting his hands on Rimmer’s shoulders.

“Man, I can’t believe—” Lister’s face lights up with a smile and something gnaws at Rimmer’s insides. “Man. You’re actually back.” He’s still smiling albeit it’s turned just a little askew and the air is starting to feel heavy.

Rimmer’s simulated heartbeat thumps loudly in his chest and he’s afraid Lister is able to hear it.

“Yeah, well. You know,” Rimmer tries to shrug but the weight of Lister’s hands on his shoulders is too palpable. “Things got a bit tedious.”

Lister keeps looking at him very intently, still smiling, and Rimmer once again thinks he’s got something wrong. He’s done something wrong, he’s made a mistake and he shouldn’t have been here. Now Lister will tell him to fuck off, that they don’t want him there and—

“Well,” Rimmer sees Lister’s throat working. “It’s good to have you back,” he pats one of his hands on his shoulders and finally puts them away, rubbing his palms on his thighs right after and for a brief second Rimmer wants to know why he did that. “Wanna go break the news to others?” Lister points a thumb behind his back.

Rimmer blinks. He’s only just remembered that for the other parties involved he’s supposed to be dead. He thinks about the other Lister and her Rimmer.

“You told them I was alive then?”

Lister shrugs.

“Two years is a long time, man.”

“Kochanski is here,” Rimmer says a bit daftly.

“She’s, um,” Lister pauses for a second, biting on the inside of his cheek. “She’s not really staying.”

Oh.

So this is the same here. Rimmer knows how this goes and yet he can’t control the noise that escapes his mouth. “Huh.”

“’s a long story,” Lister waves his hand. “C’mon, let’s go. Surprised Kryten still hasn’t come looking for us in case you would’ve ended up being a blood-thirsty simulant.”

Rimmer breathes out a quiet laugh. “Only in your dreams, Lister.”

“Right,” Lister says, looking somewhere past Rimmer’s shoulder and then shakes his head slightly, turning around; Rimmer feels incredibly stupid again, eyes skimming over Lister’s back. “Let’s go.”

Lister starts walking and Rimmer follows, speeding up a bit and now they’re walking side by side.

“You sure it’s okay if I stay?” Rimmer doesn’t think before he says it and he wishes he could take it back the moment he hears his own uneven voice.

Lister huffs. “Rimmer, don’t be stupid,” he clasps his hand over Rimmer’s shoulder again. “It’s, um,” if Rimmer wouldn’t know better, he’d think that Lister is struggling for words and it’s something he’d never think he would ever witness. “It’s real nice to have you back. Honest,” he repeats, smiling crookedly and for the umpteenth time Rimmer fights the urge to run.

He goes for a subject change, instead. 

“This old place is still the same, huh,” he says, looking around the brightly lit corridor.

It’s identical to the ones he graced not a few of hours and another dimension ago.

“Yeah,” Lister pauses for a bit. “We only got her back just a couple of weeks ago, you know.”

Rimmer does, actually. 

The similarities with the dimension he just got from are quite jarring and Rimmer doesn’t know if he should even say where he’s just been. Should he? Is that important? How many questions would this Lister ask about that Lister?

And how many would Rimmer be able to answer?

“You don’t say,” he opts out, chucking the idea in the farthest corner of his mind he can reach. “Just in time for my arrival.”

“What, you wouldn’t wanna nestle in Starbug once again? Man, you wound me.”

“Good,” Rimmer deadpans and Lister laughs, again: it echoes just barely but Rimmer is for some reason annoyed with himself for paying attention to that.

Entering the cargo bay, Rimmer feels more queasy than before. He just hopes he doesn’t radiate that energy, because if he’s found out then it’s over.

“Hey, guys,” Lister yells and everyone turns their heads towards him in unison. “You wouldn’t believe who that actually is.”

He sounds excited but Rimmer’s waiting for the punchline.

“Oh, no,” Cat shakes his head, grimacing. “Oh, no no no.”

Kryten gawks at him again with his wide eyes and Kochanski’s head peeks up from behind him.

“Yep,” Rimmer puts on the smarmiest smile he can muster and takes the wig off. “I’m back in town, baby.”

“Somebody pinch me. This is a nightmare.” Cat almost wails, throwing his hands up but Rimmer suddenly feels as if with the wig a huge weight has been lifted off. Excitement lazily and distantly blooms in his chest and frankly, it could've easily been mistaken for anxiety in Rimmer’s case, but the feeling pulls at the corners of his mouth and lifts them up.

“Mr Rimmer, this is certainly an unexpected surprise,” Kryten blinks, still looking positively shaken. 

“You bet your metal backside it is,” Rimmer raises his head. “Holly?”

“Hello, Arnold,” Holly’s face appears on the screen above.

Rimmer flicks his hand over his body. “Get me some suitable clothes, would you.”

“Yes, Arnold,” and Rimmer just barely feels it but a bit after he moves his hand to his forehead and presses his fingers into the centre and it’s there. The H feels sturdy under his fingers, he presses in until it digs into his fingertips and then looks down.

Blue.

He turns his head to look back at Lister, who’s positively beaming at him and then gives Rimmer a thumbs up. Again, the gnawing feeling returns at the sight and Rimmer trumps it as much as he can, to deal with it much, much later or preferably never.

Cat storms out past him as Rimmer turns his head back.

Kryten looks mildly unimpressed but it’s the look that Kochanski gives him that kindles some uneasy feeling. She looks almost amused, a bit curious and her eyes flick from him to Lister and it’s like she knows something he doesn’t. 

“Slime’s all back and ready to make its way home again,” Lister pats his shoulder and Rimmer almost flinches at the touch, even though in the past half an hour Lister’s hand has been a frequent visitor there.

And that’s how it goes.

He’s been briefly introduced to Kochanski, despite having a quite clear idea of who she is and precisely where she has come from, but he keeps it to himself, however he keeps quiet about where he’s just been for reasons he wouldn’t be able to explain himself if asked and he pushes it back.

It takes some time to collect those few belongings he had on the Wildfire and he tries to assure himself that this is all for the greater good. New page, leaving no stone unturned, but as he’s standing in front of what used to be his and Lister’s quarters with a cardboard box in his hands he feels as if something is stuck in his throat. Is he supposed to do this? He can simply go over to some different quarters, to literally any quarters on this ship and walk in, continue the whole ‘new day, new me’ orchestration, but for some godforsaken reason he can’t actually do that. The only thing he can seemingly do right now is to stare at the scruffy military grey of the door to the quarters, as he drums his thumbs on the sides of the box.

He shuffles awkwardly, elbowing the button and the door whooshes open.

He walks in staring down into the box, where a corner of his handkerchief with his initials sewed in sticks out a bit. But when he lifts his head he sees that it’s all the same. Everything looks the same as it did some five years ago, after they have left the ship to do some minor scavenging just for them to forget where they’d left Red Dwarf last and set her loose. His posters, his timetables and his certificates are all in place. He tries to swallow down whatever has started clawing at his throat and to his own ears it sounds like everyone in the range of a couple of yards has heard that, and embarrassment prickles at the back of his neck and—

“Hey,” Lister jumps off his bunk and Rimmer almost staggers a little. He hadn't even noticed him when he had just walked in. Lister takes an unsure step towards him and nods at the box. “You need any help with that?”

“This,” Rimmer drops his eyes on the box and then lifts them back up at Lister. “Oh, this is— Don’t be ridiculous, it’s just this one thing, I was just—” he pauses, shrugging. “I was just, um. That’s really all I had on that ship, so I thought I’d pick it up before, well.”

“Alright,” Lister’s smile is kinda thin and Rimmer’s insides tighten. The awkwardness is palpable and he wants to impale himself with the pen that’s sticking out from the other side of the box.

“This place looks, well,” he says too quickly, before the thought even had formed in his head. “It looks... the same as it basically always did.”

“Yeah, well,” Lister scratches the back of his head. “After not being ‘ere for some time I didn’t even want to pick up some of the socks I’d left on the floor before we lost her, you know what I mean,” he rubs at his face, kinda absently and Rimmer watches his hand that slowly drags up the side of his face. “But of course, if there’s anything you need to take from here or—”

“No, no, no,” Rimmer says too quickly, again. “It’s fine, more than fine, actually, I was actually wondering if I could,” he pauses, throwing a brief look at what used to be his own bunk but he lingers for a split of a second longer, and when he turns his eyes back at Lister, his face looks almost mellow. “I was wondering if I can,” he stammers again, and sighs, briefly looking at the bunk again.

“Yeah, Rimmer, of course.” Rimmer turns his head sharply back at him, and at the sight of Lister’s open face the clawing, nagging feeling is back.

“Are you sure?” 

Lister shrugs. “Sure, man, this place is still as much yours as it’s always been. I mean, if that’s what you meant—”

“Yes, that’s what— Yes. Thank you.”

Lister only smiles in response and Rimmer takes a few steps to put the box on the table. Something rattles inside as he drops it a bit sloppily and he tries to pretend that he’s actually done it as elegantly as possible, and goes to smooth over his uniform.

“The blue is nice.”

“Um, thanks,” Rimmer feels his ears get hot at the sudden flattery and he tries to get his guard up in case any jabs start flying his way, but Lister’s face still looks sincere, so Rimmer goes over to smooth the fabric over again. “Don’t know why the senile git went for the tunic, though.”

“It looks very officer-ish. And by that I mean pratty.”

There it goes. “Hardy har.”

“But that’s a good look on you. Really.”

Rimmer fights the urge to smooth the fabric over for the third time and looks over the room quickly, and something in the corner of the room catches his eye.

“What’s all that ragbag?” he nods towards a shapeless pile of whatever and Lister turns around.

“Oh, well that’s,” Lister pauses and Rimmer takes a step forward and starts making out some familiar things.

“Is that my golf club?”

“Well, you know that we used to store all this crap on Starbug, right. Um, some time ago we had this situation, right, and we had to get rid of some excessive cargo, that’s a story for another time I guess, but well.”

“And my shoe trees.”

“Yeah, as I’ve been saying,” Rimmer is dimly aware that Lister is standing by his side now, his voice closer. “I kept all that and just as we got here I brought it all up there, y’know, in case anything like that happened again. 

“You didn’t throw it away,” Rimmer says stupidly, counting everyone from Monshoetree to Sunshoetree.

“No,” Lister sounds quiet for a second. “But well, turns out I was right to do so, eh.”

Rimmer squints. “The clubs look like they haven’t been polished for aeons.”

“Now I didn’t know if you were comin’ back for sure now, did I,” Rimmer turns his head towards him and Lister just raises his eyebrows at him quickly and turns back around, but not without patting Rimmer on his upper arm, for what feels like thousandth time just this day.

“Let’s leave it until next time then, shall we,” he says, looking back at the grimy golf clubs, feeling like something is trying to turn his light bee inside out.

“Sure, man,” he hears Lister climbing up back into his bunk, the soles of his boots clunking over the metal. “Though if I remember correctly, it was your turn to do that.”

“It most definitely was not,” Rimmer wouldn’t remember if you pointed a gun between his eyes, but he turns his head for emphasis. “I’m actually quite positive it was Kryten’s.”

“Wasn’t it always?”

Rimmer shrugs and looks away. “That’s fair.”

It’s still completely mind boggling to a certain capacity that he is here. He doesn’t have to play a space-hero anymore; he can lay in his bunk, that is once again his, read a manual to “Build Your Own Telegraph Pole” puzzle, take a hike to diesel decks, alphabetise the research papers on the in-depth history of thimbles, for God’s sake, but instead he’s standing in their quarters as if someone’s glued his feet to the floor, staring into nothing. Briefly, as a last resort option, his mind wanders towards the logs. He has to send the Wildfire to some other sod that will have to take up the mantle next and while whipping up a quick homing device is a piece of cake, Rimmer finds himself to be quite reluctant to let her go yet. 

Now there’s no way, absolutely there’s no smegging way there’s a log in there now that would help him put his mind at ease. Has anything ever managed to?

“You know what’s really weird?” Lister pipes up from his bunk again.

Rimmer slowly turns his head towards him. “What?”

Lister looks up from behind the magazine he’s holding in his hands. “Just couple of days before you’ve arrived another Ace had been visitin’.”

Rimmer hopes the sharp inhale that he couldn’t control comes off as nothing but a mild surprise on his part. “Really?” he tries to sound as nonchalant as possible, even though his pulse immediately starts hammering in his head.

“Yeah, she was here for a couple of days,” Lister puts the magazine closer to him, and chews on his lower lip for a moment, thinking. “She was actually on her way back to her Red Dwarf too. Funny how that works, eh.”

“They call it a _parallel_ universe for a reason, Lister,” Rimmer can barely hear his own voice.

“Swell coincidence, innit,” Lister goes back to his magazine. “Wonder if it was happening like that anywhere else.”

Rimmer doesn’t say anything in reply, because he is too busy trying to scrape up some reasoning from within his mind on why he has stayed silent about his own last place of departure. Was it that other Ace? The one that was with that other Lister? If for some unexplainable, absurd and preposterous reason it had actually been her, then what could have happened here. 

“What was she, um,” Lister looks over his magazine again and Rimmer fails to even try to sound casually. “What was she up to in here, then.”

“Oh, we just helped her out a bit, that’s all. Like that drive you got in there? Helped her fix up a similar one, I think. And then she was off.”

“Right,” Rimmer says and just for a split of a second Lister looks like he might say something else, but then he shakes his head a little and goes back to flipping the pages over, and Rimmer doesn’t want to overthink that. Him not wanting it doesn’t mean he won’t try to, though.

Without saying anything, he leaves the quarters with yet another tempest brewing in his teapot of a body. Another Ace has been here just before him. And anyone is yet to make any indication that he’s unwanted here. Despite all, wisps of doubt sting him, and his mind rounds back to the logs. Really, what’s the possibility something similar could have occurred somewhere else, so that yet another smug git in a flight suit and a wig was able to say something useful in here? However, as nonsensical this all might be, in the fairest sense of the word during his own Ace stint he has been through worse. Technically. 

***

Rimmer makes his third lap around D-Deck in the past 2 hours.

Technically he has been through worse as Ace, but between battling a crazed army of mechanoids and battling feelings of conflicting nature that include: a) homesickness, despite the fact that ‘home’ for Rimmer has always been just a word in a dictionary between ‘holy’ and ‘homicide’ and b) something he doesn’t want to qualify as anything, because those other feelings conjure images of Lister in his mind and it makes his stomach churn, he’d rather fight a dozen mechanoids right now. Trying is most definitely gonna hurt in this case, but he’s not in control of his feet anymore as he cuts a corner and instead of making another loop around the deck, he walks towards the elevator. Hiding, holing up himself in the tightest corner of the ship is exactly what he’s doing right now, and even though being on the Wildfire still brings some distant memory of Mother dressing him up in his brothers’ second-hand clothes that were always too big for him, but he’s grasping for straws in the attempt to find a glimpse of solace.

Except everything goes right out of the airlock as he walks into the cargo bay and realises there’s someone in there.

Something clinks and echoes loudly off the walls of the bay and then someone swears under their breath.

Rimmer peeks over and first he sees a slightly battered ship around the size of a shuttlepod a couple of sections away from the Wildfire. He doesn’t remember seeing it earlier, or he might have just mistaken it for Blue Midget with the corner of his eye, because frankly, at that particular moment it was the last thing he could have possibly cared about, but he doesn’t let that thought continue as he sees Kochanski walk over from behind the ship, holding a tire iron in one of her hands.

Well, isn’t this interesting. 

She sees him almost instantly though and waves her free hand in greeting and any possible plan of retreat is shut down immediately. He starts making his way over to her, tentatively, racking his brain over what they’re even going to talk about, but as he gets closer Kochanski urges him with a more rapid wave of her hand.

“You’re just the person I needed.”

He raises his eyebrows at that, but says nothing.

“You’re aware from whom I’ve got these, right?” She points at some scattered blueprints over the floor and the proverbial lightbulb over Rimmer’s head almost pops.

“Yes, Lister got me into the swing of things.”

Kochanski smiles and Rimmer thinks of arcade lamps lighting up. His stomach churns.

“Remarkable stuff, isn’t it,” she leans back over the small ship, the tire iron still in her hands. “I’ve only known A Rimmer in my lifetime, but that one... She was quite extraordinary.”

“If you say ‘What a gal’, I’m gonna leave.”

“Well, you’re a Rimmer, alright,” she sighs. “You guys seem to all have met your doubles in some way,” she goes on, somewhat distantly.

“You never had the pleasure?”

“No.”

Rimmer looks over the ship behind Kochanski for a moment. “It’s not as... exciting as it sounds. Can’t avoid mishaps or some unfathomable feelings of rabid jealousy,” he says, trying to add as much humour to his tone as he can.

“Can’t say I’m not completely unfamiliar with that,” Kochanski replies and it sounds a lot like she’s telling it to herself, too, and Rimmer is ready to claw at his own eye sockets with how much he wants to inquire more about what on Io she meant.

“You said you needed me?” He reminds her and she looks back at him.

“Oh, yes, yes I’m—” she turns around and points at the ship with the tire-iron. “I’m having troubles with the hull. I feel like the lowest layer just might get disintegrated under what I have to paint over.”

Rimmer thinks. If he’s not wrong, then another Ace should’ve told Kochanski to mix rauclimnium with depleted uranium, oxidise it and melt it, and cover the hull with the alloy. 

He picks up some of the scattered papers from the floor and reads over. It says exactly that.

“What’s the hull made of?” He asks without lifting his head.

“It’s some titanium alloy but it’s from the 25th century.”

“Ah, isn’t that when they suddenly realised they were having a shortage of titanium?”

“Exactly,” something clunks and Rimmer briefly looks up to see Kris scrap the pointy end of the tire-iron over the ship.

He puts over the blueprints over the tool box but doesn’t lift his eyes back to Kochanski. “Mix in the trodein acid with the alloy. It must work.”

“Wouldn’t it cause the opposite reaction with the uranium?”

“It would, if the uranium wasn’t depleted,” he lifts his head back and he’s met with a rather incredulous stare and he can’t help inhaling sharply, almost defensively.

“Right,” she rubs the side of her face, staring into nothing but then she lights up with realisation and looks back at him with a smile. “No, no, that makes quite a lot of sense actually. Thank you.”

Rimmer gives her a tight smile in return and they fall into silence, not looking at one another, as Kris goes back to check something out at the blueprints, as she squats over to them and puts the tire-iron on the ground and then reaches behind her ear to pull out a tiny pencil. Something weighs down heavily over his neck, as Rimmer watches her work and just as he thinks he’s safe to retire and wait out his turn at “sulking-alone-time”, his own mouth betrays him.

“How’s life been treating you here, then?”

Kochanski stops what she’s doing and lifts her head at him, putting the pencil back behind her ear. She sits upright and chuckles.

“Could’ve been much worse,” she shrugs. “But to a larger extent it could’ve been better.”

Rimmer snorts. “Was it the everything or the everything?”

“Must have been the everything,” Kochanski nods with a smile. They fall quiet for a moment again. “I just want to get back home, you know. There are my own Dave, Kryten and Cat there somewhere.”

No Rimmer. 

“Those three must be the poorest substitutes you could ever find.”

Kochanski shakes her head, but then stops, looking a little mortified. “Maybe you’re right about Kryten.”

“Old rust bucket is giving you problems?”

“He really doesn’t like me,” Kochanski squints, looking Rimmer in the eye. “Like he really, actively dislikes me. Maybe it’s those rabid fits of jealousy you were talking about earlier.”

“Incredible,” Rimmer shakes his head, leaning over the ship. “But you can’t also tell me this Lister isn’t the worst possible Lister.”

“Well,” Kochanski gets up and dusts her knees off with her hands. “Of course he’s drastically different from my Dave, but... He’s a familiar face,” she shrugs.

The glimpse of amusement Rimmer felt has drained away quickly and he coughs to mask it.

“If you’re a tabasco sauce obsessed masochist, then sure.”

Kochanski snorts, rubbing her face.

“He’s missed you, you know,” she says after a bit and Rimmer’s heart sinks.

“Don’t be daft,” he says and it comes out pathetic.

“No, no he’s even,” Kochanski tilts her head. “He’s even _talked_ about it,” she looks at Rimmer, her expression unreadable. Or maybe he’s too busy trying to surge down whatever is threatening to wash him ashore to pick up any social cue.

“He was probably trying to make you feel sorry for him so he could get you into bed with him.”

Kochanski smiles somehow sombrely. “Trust me, he’s gone other ways about it. He did stop one day,” she blinks and Rimmer feels like he’s about to go mad. This rings too close to the conversation he’s had with the other Kochanski and he almost feels feverish. “But he did miss you. Trust me,” she sighs wistfully. “I know about missing people.”

Rimmer feels a hot flash roll down from the back of his head and he wishes Kochanski would leave. He wishes everyone would leave this ship and just leave him alone, he needs to be alone, even though in that moment he feels unbearably lonely.

“You know, when Ace just got here he was almost over the moon. And then after she left he started sulking again.” The ‘again’ stings and Rimmer tries to puff out the air of nonchalance, rolling his eyes. “Don’t be like that,” she tuts. “I’m sure he’s glad you’re here.”

And when you’ll be gone, he’ll blame me for it, Rimmer thinks, but doesn’t dare to say it out loud. 

“If you need any more help, send a note to the bucket of bolts with wires for opposable thumbs and she’ll find me,” he says without looking at her, and turns around. He hears her sigh and he’s itching to turn his head to look, but he resists.

Lister hasn’t been missing him. The wench has just gone space crazy, anyone would on this ship; he’s right and he will be proven right after Kochanski leaves. Simple. It’s clear as a day to him and he doesn’t need to inquire further about it to anyone: he will see it unravel himself. Of course everyone was delightful to see Ace, that’s a tale as old as the stench of whiskey residue in Hollister’s office, people love Ace and he’s experienced it countless of times, he’s witnessed it, he’s been torn apart zealously watching it happen in front of his own eyes, but now it’s just him again, here, just Rimmer and over time it’s gonna gradually settle in for everyone. This is exactly how it’s gonna be.

Kochanski is going to smeg off to her own stupid Lister and won’t think twice about this dimension, and Lister here will find some way to blame Rimmer for everything that’s transpired, he will be judged, quietly and silently, distastefully and disdainfully by all the rest parties involved and it’s gonna go back to Rimmer vs. the world.

So, nothing’s really gonna change after all. Wasn’t it what he wanted? Wasn’t it why he was tearing himself in two trying to get back here?

He needs to watch a bloody log.

***

For some hours Rimmer haunts the corridors of the ‘Dwarf, having informed Holly that no one was to know where he was at any given moment and in theory it’s easy to avoid some four people on a ship this size, but it’s not Rimmer’s lucky day, despite all. He goes over to check the bigger hall of the disco where barely anyone goes anymore to see if it’s still as good of a place to hide behind the bar counter and have a panic attack just in case, and he’s kind of delighted to see that yes, it still is. The layers of dust also inform him that no one’s been here for ages, which makes sense, because no one in fact has set foot on this ship in at least five years, but as he drags his index finger along the bar top collecting dust, he thinks that the later Kryten’s grabby mechanoid cleaning hands get here, the better.

At the approximate time by which Kochanski must have left the landing bay to retire to sleep, Rimmer moves along the corridors quietly. Making it to the landing bay, he makes sure he’s all alone but even after that, he tries to make as little noise as possible.

The Wildfire doesn’t greet him and he’s grateful, but it stings just a little anyway.

It’s almost as if through a haze that he picks out the next log on his improvised watchlist and as the image loads onto the screen, he regrets it immediately, because the git number umpteen is wearing his gitty pilot shades. On the ship. In the dark. The wig, the suit, the shades — the whole package is in there and Rimmer lets out a vexed sigh: there’s not a chance in hell this clown is going to tell him anything he might need to hear. It’s going to be part two of one of those gigolo tirades, that’s the only thing you can expect from someone like that.

Rimmer presses play.

The Ace on the screen is quiet for a bit and as Rimmer gets even more annoyed by the presence of the sunglasses, despite quite literally being able to see the dark void of space through the portholes right behind Ace’s back, but then Ace sniffs loudly and Rimmer freezes.

He looks closer, as much as the brightness and the camera angle allow him to see, but it’s still pretty dark. Ace still hasn’t moved much but then he sniffs again, bit louder this time, rubbing the side of his face and then turns his head slightly, although Rimmer still can’t tell where he’s looking, but then it dawns on him.

He’s been crying.

“ _Loss_ ,” Ace’s voice wavers a little and he coughs. “Loss— you should know a lot about loss, shouldn’t you?” 

There’s not a doubt in Rimmer’s mind — Ace had been crying before he sat down to record this log, because Rimmer knows the sound of the voice and the constant sniffing, you really shouldn’t posses any extraordinary deduction skills to figure that one out, but also the tiny and bitter voice in the back of his head doesn’t fail to remind him that this is, in some stupid, paradox-inducing, universe’s-biggest-jape-y way this is also, quite literally, him. So he knows.

Ace sighs, rubbing his face with both of his hands, but the glasses are still on.

“I think that—” his voice wavers again but then he shakes his head. “You know how this whole stupid damn thing has begun? Different decisions lead to different consequences,” he sounds almost manic, throwing his hands and Rimmer scoots to the farthest corner of his seat. “So every time— every single time there’s doubt and hesitation looming up there,” he taps his index winger on his temple, “that means there’s another you, the one who’s not given in to those and made an actual, sturdy and impactful decision.”

Ace pauses, sniffing again and exhaling heavily through his mouth. Rimmer loathes, despises and resents yet another talk about yet another break he’s never got and he doesn’t want to hear what’s coming next.

“And that also means there’s another you, who’s overwhelmed by the good ol’ pal indecision, mauling at you with its claws.”

The sound of the simulated heartbeat is almost deafening in his ears. He braces himself for the inevitable lecture, screwing up his eyes as getting ready for a blow.

“But then there’s also another you.”

Rimmer slightly opens one eye and peeks through, ignoring the waves of nausea Ace’s shaky voice sends through him.

“Another you, who’s waited for too long.”

See, realistically virtually anything could’ve happened that in turn has driven smug git number whatnot into making this elaborate teary-eyed performance in front of the camera, but deep inside Rimmer knows the bitter truth that both destiny and chance are cruel to him.

Ace sniffs loudly again, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand.

“I was too late...” He continues, voice still wavering, rubbing the side of his face, setting the glasses a bit askew. “Too late... The ship just went,” he stops and exhales with his mouth slightly agape and it makes Rimmer’s stomach drop. “She just went in pieces. The life signs have blinked away from the scanner right in front of my eyes.” Rimmer inhales sharply. Yes, of course he knows about loss and death, he experienced the latter first-hand in its most literal sense, mourning and grief have been dragging up behind him for quite some time now, making a constant grating sound: they have multitudes, too, whether it be the sour and resentful grief for Mother and Father and his older brothers or if it’s the mourning of the self he could have been to which he succumbs when the clock strikes ‘lick your wounds in solitary’ o’clock. He watched Red Dwarf blow up too, there was time he was sure they’d never get her back and then he left, thinking he was never going to go back, but then after all, despite all odds, he is here once again, with everybody safe and sound. To a certain point.

He thinks about the Ace burial ground. He thinks about _all those Aces_ that passed on and it adds a notch to the grief belt. He thinks about the future ones and the ones that may be out there, right now.

“I could’ve been here sooner, damn it,” Ace speaks up again, anger seething through his voice. “I was ready to go weeks ago, I was just— I was a coward. Stupid,” Ace sighs, and finally takes off the sunglasses, but it just makes Rimmer feel more queasy, because after then he looks straight into the camera and the sight of his bloodshot eyes and the dark circles under them, despite the whole Ace getup which Rimmer always found beyond ridiculous, is an uneasy thing to see.

“Sometimes you know the timing is right — you feel it deep down in your guts, but you still hesitate, because— whatever, old Rimsy is a namby-pamby slimy maggot,” he breaks into another voice that sounds like a far-off impersonation of Todhunter. “It was foolish of me to think that I wouldn’t get cornered by it again like that.” Ace’s voice goes quiet a bit, as he lowers his eyes and Rimmer sees his throat working. “Decisiveness can be far more crucial than you think,” Ace looks back into the camera again and Rimmer almost jumps. “You should keep it closer, as you would keep an enemy it is,” and the screen goes dark without Ace bidding farewell.

Rimmer looks at his own reflection in the black of the tiny screen and the H on his forehead feels heavy. He still can’t be sure what precisely that blubbering idiot was talking about, he thinks, but the train of thought feels foreign and detached and on the verge of derailing. 

He can make a decision alright. He will just go on with life here on Red Dwarf. Here, decision made, sturdy and certain. The only thing that should concern him is that he’s here, alive and well and that’s it. Kochanski is going to leave and whatever fit Lister might throw because of it is none of his business. Whoever might voice some objections to Rimmer staying in the long run, be it Lister himself, or Kryten or Cat, or even the senile piece of junk that runs this ship — again, none of this affects him.

Exiting the Wildfire on his barely functioning legs, he is dead set on keeping it up, although if he digs deeper, it still comes off like he’s just making feeble attempts to convince himself.

However, he still strides into the next day without losing that attitude, even though he sneaked into the quarters when Lister, surprisingly, was fast asleep and it was earlier than 0300 ship’s time, and wakes up way before Lister would even think about doing so.

Arming himself with a pen and a tablet, he goes over back to the D-Deck, where the day before he passed by some storage units, with the doors covered in layers of dust and goes to work. He starts off with doing inventory on battery fluid containers and then switching over to the ship’s stick glue storage. It’s relaxing and he can admit that he’s missed that, he sets up a rhythm to himself and works in silence, but it’s not enough to set his thoughts astray. Check, tick off, move along — it works like a charm and even the stale air of the lower decks is somehow thrilling.

There’s literally quite nothing like going home, isn’t there.

He’s back into the empty quarters a couple of hours later, sitting down to check back on the numbers and do some minor calculations and he feels alright. Who said he couldn’t do that? After all, the guidance from the last log has worked, never mind the context in which that Ace spoke or what he spoke about. He took the advice, he interpreted the way that suited him and now he’s doing just fine and dandy.

Unless until he hears the doors to the quarters woosh open and he glances briefly without lifting his head and sees Lister. If Rimmer tenses, then he just blames it on the pungent smell of what must be Lister’s ‘special’ guacamole home recipe that might as well have been called for what it is — jalapeño jelly. 

Rimmer looks back into his calculations but he has to blink before he remembers which section he was on before he got distracted.

“Hey, Rimmer,” Lister chirps, walking behind Rimmer’s back and he inhales sharply through his nose. “You disappeared last night. I thought we’d sit down an’ celebrate you comin’ back.”

“I’m a busy man, Lister,” Rimmer bites back, without lifting his head. “I have things to do and places to be.”

“Sure,” Lister says somehow incredulously. “Crawlin’ around C-Deck is quite the place to be, what could I possibly be thinkin’.”

Rimmer sighs, dropping his hands on the table and looks at Lister, who’s standing just a couple of feet away from him, leaning against the table, looking right at Rimmer.

The door to their quarters pings.

“Come in,” Lister says, without breaking eye contact.

“First of all, I was on D-Deck,” Rimmer emphasises it by pointing his pen towards Lister. “Second, whatever, if you want to throw me a goity little welcome party, then go to town,” he finishes and looks back into his notes.

“Unbelievable,” Lister stretches out. The door pings in the background again but neither of the two pay attention to that. “I have to convince you to throw you a blasted party.”

“Idea fears the initiative, Listy,” Rimmer smirks, finishing up ticking off the numbers and turns the page. Some languid feeling stretches out over his insides, but he knows it’s the pleasure of completing a task.

“Sure and it’s definitely not anything else.”

Rimmer sighs again and lifts his head at Lister.

“What’re you implying, you half-witted doink?”

Lister shrugs, still radiating amusement and picks up some dangly toy from the table; the toy makes a clinking trill-y high-pitched sound when the top part of it is spun, so that’s what Lister does immediately. “I’m implying that you’re a git.”

Rimmer sighs again. “If you came here for the sole reason of bothering me,” Lister spins the toy, “then there’s something I ought to tell you, miladdio” Lister spins the toy, “I’m well and beyond above whatever scheme you might be organising,” Lister spins the toy, “and also—” Lister spins the toy once more and it breaks the camel’s back. “That’s— would you _stop_ that?!”

Lister’s hand freezes mid-air when he’s just about to give the toy another spin and he looks back at Rimmer. He’s just realised he raised his voice and he feels just a tad fired up, especially upon seeing Lister’s mouth slowly curl into a little smile.

“Whole Ace persona didn’t last on you too long, eh,” Lister fully turns to Rimmer, putting the toy back on the table and then crosses the arms on his chest. “Gonna put me on report next?”

Rimmer grips his pen and turns back to his forgotten notes, the feeling that he doesn’t want to even begin to pick apart still spreading over. “I’ll do something worse than put you on report,” he begins, ticking off another box. “I’m gonna stick you to doing inventory of every single square piece of every bog roll on this ship until your jammy little eyes pop right out of your gimpy pudgy head and roll out of the nearest airlock.”

When no reply follows his tirade, for a second Rimmer feels relief and then triumph, but then instantly guilt writhes out of nowhere and Rimmer feels stupid — they’ve barely ever had any lines or boundaries, why would he ever cross one now, but still he feels the back of his neck burn and he warily turns his head back at Lister. 

Back at Lister, who looks utterly stupid, with his cheeks puffed out and mouth a thin line, trying to hold back in a laugh, his eyes on set on him.

Rimmer’s light bee whirls.

He breathes out sharply, any guilt he might have felt washes away instantly, and reluctantly he finds himself wanting to smile back, but the muscles of his face work faster than his brain and he’s already smiling back, just a little, however he can’t seem to stop and he doesn’t really mind.

“It’s like watching some interpretive mating dance,” Kochanski says from somewhere in the back and Rimmer’s face drops instantly, head turning sharply.

“I believe it’s somehow worse, ma’am,” Kryten adds.

“I think I’m going to vomit,” Cat rounds it up and Rimmer realises that the three of them have been watching the entire thing. When the hell did they manage to even get in here?

Rimmer exhales sharply, feeling his face get hot and he tries to go back to his task, but he turns his body a tad too curtly, hitting his right elbow on the edge of the table, it stings just a bit but he lets go of the pen and it rolls off the table, dropping onto the floor and clattering away. A hot-flashing wave of embarrassment washes over him and he takes just a second too long before scramming to bend down to get the pen, but he almost clashes heads with Lister, who got there first. Rimmer swallows, looking at the back of his head but then it’s quickly replaced by Lister’s smiling, smarmy face. He’s standing on one knee in front of Rimmer, extending the pen as some stupid peace offering or if it’s one of the stupid melodrama’s that the git himself loves so much, but Rimmer can’t find it within himself to get mad or upset, and with a mumbled ‘thanks’ he snatches the pen back, making sure he doesn’t touch Lister.

The pen is warm in his hand.

The Cat makes a retching noise.

Rimmer lifts his head sharply. “What’re you lot gawking at?!” he barks, but the four pair of eyes set on him suddenly make him feel overly exposed and his every pore and fiber sounding the most familiar alarm: run, run, run, run. “I think I left the kettle on,” he stands up abruptly, the legs of the chair scraping against the metal floors and makes a beeline for the exit, abandoning his calculations, and he doesn’t look back, he simply doesn’t dare to still clutching the pen in his hand.

He only realises he has actually left in the kitchen area when he’s gone a deck down, so the kettle line might not have worked as well as he thought it would. Which he didn’t.

There’s no reasonable explanation for what has just occurred. He and Lister bickered constantly, that’s what they did, but for him to actually enjoy it, have fun even? And whatever those other dimwits have been drivelling on about? Okay, he’ll bite, maybe there is some part of him that has indeed missed their pointless skirmishes with Lister, but overall that was just another inseparable part of the routine in his pre-Ace life, so of course that would come with the whole package.

He fetches another tablet and goes onto rearranging the canned asparagus supplies.

Even if that was partially true, that still hardly mattered, because that will pass. It will just again become completely routine and trivial, there will be no positive emotions involved and therefore it will all be right again.

Absently he thinks that he can’t remember the last time he actually, genuinely put actual malice while trying to insult Lister, but he nips that one at the bud.

Going back to doing inventory, he’s holding his thoughts prime and firm. Move, tick off, check — once again, it works, but then he walks into the aligned corridor and whilst the standard light temperature for all JMC ships is cold, this corridor seem to be having warm light and he makes a little note to himself on his tablet to get that fixed, but as he looks up at the light source he thinks about Lister smiling at him earlier.

That languid feeling comes back, stretching over him as if spilling right out of his light bee and it’s warm and fluttering, and he grips the pen in his hand, trying to think that there’s definitely something wrong with the warm light LED strips.

The clock ticks the hours away as Rimmer gradually goes through inventorying the supplies, ignoring the bludgeoning stream of thoughts beating itself against the walls of his skull. The concept of missing Lister is akin to missing having your head shoved into an anthill full of fire ants; even the symptoms are somehow similar — it’s burning and it’s itching, however Rimmer highly doubts that if he goes up to the medibay, the bots will provide him with some medication that would be able to cure it.

He can still try, though.

Letting his mind wander, envisioning the situation where he actually trots over to the medibay and tries to explain to the doddery medibot that there’s something wrong with him, but he only gets to conjuring up the images of him walking into the ‘bay, as something rattles loudly outside of the ship, making the atoms of the hull jump around and he knows exactly what usually causes this.

Not again, he thinks, he’s just got back here yesterday, he’s done and finished, he’s hung up the wig.

He walks out into the corridor and gets to the nearest screen, where Holly informs him that it’s Kochanski doing test jumps. Rimmer feels mighty relieved on that, however his curiosity gets the best of him and he leaves the cans of asparagus alone and makes his way down to the landing pad. As he walks in, however, he sees Kris herself standing by the biggest porthole with... Lister by her side, both with their heads lifted up towards the porthole. Rimmer is almost reluctant to take a step, but he smoothes down his uniform and walks over.

“Holly’s told me you’re doing test jumps,” he says, and both of them turn their heads toward him simultaneously, which almost makes him stop in his tracks. Kris instantly turns back to the porthole, her shoulders tense, and Rimmer pretends he doesn’t see Lister take a second too long before he turns back too.

“It’s just the first big one, for now,” Kris says, the sound of her tapping her foot on the floor nervously echoing slightly. “We used that homing device that you’ll be using on your ship later, too, so we’re killing two birds with one stone here.”

“Right,” Rimmer says, pointedly walking over and making a stop by Kochanski’s side. “You did what I told you to?”

Kris nods first. “Yes.”

With the corner of his eye Rimmer sees Lister leaning from over Kochanski’s side, giving him an incredulous look.

“Everything worked out fine?”

“Some small primary tests showed that it should go by swimmingly but we’ll see in what state she’ll go back to us. If she does,” Kochanski looks at her watch. “But yeah, thank you, again,” she gives him a curt smile and then turns her head back to the porthole. “Without you it would’ve taken me much longer.”

“ _C'est mon plaisir._ ”

“Oi, would you just look at him,” Lister begins, putting up a grating voice. “Going up and over, putting on the Mr Incredible Ace Rimmer, sir, whenever he needs to and then he’s back to being a weasel.” 

Rimmer inhales sharply. “Are you quite finished?”

Lister just grimaces in reply and mumbles something, and then turns his head back to the porthole.

“How much longer left?” Rimmer asks after a few moments.

Kris looks at her watch again. “Just about three more minutes, if it’s all good.”

She’s visibly nervous, watching that patch of the void of deep space without even blinking, her arms crossed over her chest and she keeps rubbing her own shoulders as if she’s cold and Rimmer knows exactly just what Kochanski’s going through right now, except for the fact that she actually does have people to come back to, people who miss her and she misses them — she’s driven by that and it keeps her going, and the only thing that Rimmer was driven by when he was coming back here was the fact that he’s a giant moron.

He looks into the porthole, too, and loses focus for a bit, letting it roam among the stars, but then for some reason he wants to look at Lister so much it almost aches, but he bites the insides of his cheek and waits.

One of the smug gits in the logs did say that it was okay to miss him. But is it okay to miss him when he’s right there?

Rimmer blinks.

The rumble returns and some tools rattle about, and Kochanski’s breath hitches a little and then Holly’s face appears on the nearby screen.

“She’s coming about.”

A little dot appears in the darkness of space and then lights up in an instant and the ship flickers into view and then fully materialises. She looks just fine, even better than Rimmer last saw her and it must be a success overall. Kochanski yelps, happily and throws herself at Lister, and they hug, laughing and smiling, and Rimmer feels like the residue of that warm feeling he’s felt earlier is going to give him acid reflux.

The three of them then walk off to leave some space to let Holly open the airlock and let the ship back into the Dwarf’s landing bay, and after she’d docked in place, autopilot doing its job just perfectly and after a little time spent running around with Kochanski going by the list to check out the integrity of all the vital systems and engines, everything is fine. Even the drive is fine, and not burnt to a crisp, but Rimmer just thinks it must’ve been his luck, as usual.

“She’s all good,” Kochanski says on an exhale, climbing out and her relief is palpable. 

This time Rimmer can’t help glancing at Lister and the sight of him smiling up at Kochanski with that sad little smile makes Rimmer want to walk out of the airlock.

Rimmer clenches his hands into fists and digs his fingers into the meat of his palms, looking away.

“Oh my god, it actually worked,” Kris rubs her face with her hands. “It actually bloody worked,” she clumsily sits down on the airstep, still holding her head in her hands and her eyes shine.

Something loops itself around Rimmer’s throat and he feels like he’s about to choke.

“When are you goin’ then?” Lister asks and the sound of his voice tightens another loop.

“I think— Tomorrow, Dave, can I go tomorrow?,” Kochanski lifts her eyes and sighs. “I want to go tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow it is,” says _Dave_. “But now we feast,” he says, throwing his arms up and both Rimmer and Kochanski sigh in unison, though Kris does it with a smile on her face and Rimmer can’t really share the sentiment.

However, that’s what happens — Rimmer’s ‘welcoming party’ blurred into Kochanski’s ‘goodbye party’, even calling it a party overall is a mile long stretch, as it’s simply an excuse to drink and wreck more chaos than they usually do, and although Rimmer is vary of himself in close proximity to alcohol and Lister since that one last time, he convinces himself to relax and actually keeps it up and everything ends up being not bad; Rimmer manages to even tell about a couple of his fiery conquests as Ace that even get the Cat interested, Lister performs a rastabilly skank rendition of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and it makes Kryten weep. 

Rimmer keeps sneaking glances on Kochanski the whole evening and she looks positively relaxed, smiling and acting more lenient than he ever remember her being before the accident, and he wants to be glad for her, he really does, but it’s all overcome by dread, because her departure will set something off, it will turn another stone and it’s not the taste of the stale alcohol that makes Rimmer feel queasy.

When that other Lister said that he changed she was wrong. He hasn’t changed a bit, but everyone and everything around him keeps changing and he’s standing in one place in the middle of it all as if someone filled his boots with lead to the brims.

It’s well past midnight when everyone leaves to their corners of the ship and Rimmer is left with Lister in their quarters, and Rimmer is too hyper-aware of the fact that this is just them two, back to their quarters, back to their respective bunks. He feels awkward and stupid, lying rigidly in his bed and staring at the bottom of the top bunk, hoping that Lister would be asleep.

“I can’t believe Krissie’s leavin’ tomorrow.” No such luck.

“I’m sure you will manage.”

“No, man, you don’t understand it was—,” Lister sighs. “It was so different here. An’ I can’t believe you’re here either. It’s all happenin’ so fast.”

Lister connecting those two events like that makes Rimmer wince.

“Goodnight, Lister,” he says rather pointedly, cutting off any possible further conversation.

Next day, when they all gathered at the cargo bay to bid Kochanski goodbye, Rimmer’s standing by Kryten’s side and leg jiggles, his arms knit tightly behind his back. He almost wants to ask her to not go, but then he wants her to leave as soon as possible, but then again, he doesn’t actually know what he wants. 

He watches Lister and Kochanski hug goodbye and, again, something burns coldly in his chest, and actually there’s something that he wants — he wants to run. 

Cat gives Kochanski a parting gift in form of a half-eaten apple and a pearl ring without the pearl, and even Kryten is somehow touched by her parting, even though Rimmer did notice himself the metal git being somehow hostile towards her.

But when Kochanski moves towards him, Rimmer’s mouth feels dry.

“Happy trails,” he croaks out.

“Same to you,” she extends her right hand and Rimmer goes to shake it.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he bites back, harsher than he’s meant to, but Kochanski just gives him a tight smile in return. Absently Rimmer feels others watching their exchange but that awareness takes a step back when Kochanski puts her other hand over Rimmer’s and it makes him drop his eyes towards their hands and back. The gesture is so oddly compassionate and benign it stings with unfamiliarity, but Kochanski is still giving him a tight smile, and just for a moment it looks like she’s gonna say something else, but then she lets go and turns to her ship. 

When the airlock doors shut behind Kochanski’s ship the noise is almost deafening to Rimmer’s ears. 

They watch her ship gain speed and skip out of the range and blink out and that’s it.

Kochanski is gone.

Lister is standing between Rimmer and Kryten, three of them watching the sky out of the porthole, while the Cat strode out almost the second the airlock doors were closed.

“Nobody, but nobody, can make it out here alone,” Rimmer recites the poem vacantly and then almost regrets it, not wanting to think what places of his brain has it even come out of.

“Good thing we’re not then,” Lister says by his side and his words tingle sorely, firing up resentment, and Rimmer gives him a side-glance, thinking he’s gonna definitely do something bad to him if he says some crap about the boys from the ‘Dwarf, but he sees Lister’s eyes and can’t help fully turning his head towards him, resentment somehow draining as he looks at the stars reflecting in Lister’s dark eyes. 

He swallows uneasily.

Lister looks back, giving him a little smile and then turns back, patting him on the shoulder and Rimmer has almost forgotten that weight and it lingers. “Let’s go, Krytes,” Lister says somewhere behind his back and Kryten follows along. “We got some golf clubs to polish.”

Immersed the cool air of the ship, Rimmer looks at the stars and the light they emit feels warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well things are actually happening, right! thank u for reading this. as a side note i do have a little gay playlist tailored to this fic so u are very welcome to check it out if u want to ! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2RHLN9jA1BEqN658BtJ1Ft?si=GNgH8PqsRs6sTnIhw00qeA


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